No Sooner the Old Hope
by CBK1000
Summary: What has been stomped down must always spring back up. Caroline, realizations, and a storm front. Klaus/Caroline Fourth in an ongoing AU Originals series.
1. Part One

**A/N: Ok, so this fic is long overdue. I meant to have it posted about two weeks ago, but ran into some unforseen computer issues that took me a bit to sort out. Then yesterday I tried to post it, got all the way to typing out the title and the sumnmary and was just about to upload the fic when I realized that the site had glitched and not saved the three hours worth of edits and notes I had just typed up. So here I am today trying again, and if this site attempts to put a kibosh on the process again, I swear I will eat its BALLS for dinner. I am done with your shit, FF. net.**

**Anyway, due to the length of this I have split it into two parts. Depending on the length of the second part, which I have already begun but not yet finished, this may extend into three parts, although I doubt it. At any rate, keep your eyes peeled for the second half of this. I will post them together instead of scattering them about in separate documents like the rest of the series, so if you're interested in the second part, be sure to add this fic to your alerts.**

**So. Some notes. There are a lot of hotels and street names that will come up throughout this fic but I have decided not to spell most of them out because I feel as though the context of the sentence generally makes it pretty obvious that I'm talking about a road or a hotel or whatnot. Just be aware that you're going to have a lot of names thrown at you.**

**First of all, I have changed Klaus' name to 'Nicholas'. This actually popped up in my last fic, but it was only a single line and may have been either overlooked or taken to be a typo. This is intentional; since Klaus is posing as a native Irishman, I thought 'Nicholas' would be more appropriate than 'Niklaus' while still essentially remaining the same name.**

**The 'electric torches' to which I refer are flashlights.**

**The Columbian Mocha and Tyrconnell to which Klaus refers as he is tasting the officer are a blend of tobacco and a brand of whiskey, respectively. (Not terribly important, but the explanation lends his comment about bad habits a bit more sense.)**

**The 'Liam' to which I refer is Liam Tobin, a prominent member of Michael Collins' intelligence network during the Irish War for Independence. 'Tom' is Tom Cullen, another rebel at the head of Collins' network. Harry Boland was a good friend of Collins' and yet another prominent Irish rebel.**

**'RIC' stands for Royal Irish Constabulary, the main police force of the time.**

**'Fenian' refers to either the Fenian Brotherhood or the Irish Republican Brotherhood, political organizations devoted to establishing an independent Irish Republic.**

**The 'Tans and Auxiliaries' were a paramilitary unit of the Royal Irish Constabulary.**

**A 'lorry' is a truck.**

**The 'coke' being smuggled in for the bomb factories that Collins establishes is actually coal. (This confused me quite a bit while reading my Irish history books, because to me, 'coke' is either a fountain drink, or cocaine. I'm not terribly versed in bomb-making, but I'm relatively certain cocaine is not used in the process.)**

**'Cathleen ni Houlihan' was a play written by Yeats in the early 20th century; Cathleen is the main character of the production and is actually a metaphor for Ireland.**

**I think that's it, so far as major terminology is concerned. You've either read all of this and are heading into this with some semblance of an idea of what's going on, or you skipped everything and you're careening blindly forward, enthusiastic but clueless. (Unless of course you're familiar with this particular time period.) Either way, good luck. I hope you enjoy this latest entry in the series.**

* * *

**Dublin, 1918**

An Irish night is absolute.

The lights cannot see through the fog; the houses leap from nowhere. The midnight people, these polished officials, painted women, ragged children of the streets, pass in specter flickers from corner to corner.

The lamps paint his hands green.

The papers folded within his inner pocket crackle.

He presses the tiny star of his last peppermint to the roof of his mouth, cracks it like a bone between his teeth, rolls its thin slivers back along his tongue.

At Denmark he sees the officer with his electric torch, whistling as he goes, and out of the fog he steps, hand to his papers, smile on his lips, and though much of humanity consists of the bovine, that stupid cow complacency which takes so long to understand its death, this one scents the wolf beneath wool, tips up his hat, squints out into the night.

"You," the officer says. "Stop."

The rain makes a river of the street beneath him; the officer's boots with their gunshot heels shimmer within this great wet mirror, distort, ripple to pieces.

"Quite a miserable night," he tells the officer with smile still upon his lips, fingers tapping patiently against his papers.

Inside his mouth swirls peppermint fire, saline thirst, metal adrenaline, all these distinct flavors of the hunt, but he has no time to savor, to shut his eyes and lose himself in the feast, to drink deep, take his time, empty the veins.

Men of revolution are servants to time, this great ticking clock upon which their lives and causes dangle; to dally is to waste the grains, and once depleted the hourglass cannot be tilted again.

War hinges upon a schedule met, an appointment honored.

Sorry, mate.

He is upon the officer before he can stumble back, and from his hand he seizes the torch, and across his brow he slams its handle, once, twice, and now the man drops his stone weight to the pavement underneath him and he kneels down to slip his fingers between splintered white and liquid gray and he pulls his hand away black.

He licks his fingers.

Touch bitter, this one. Not been watching what he eats, and does he detect a hint of the Columbian Mocha, a faint suggestion of Tyrconnell?

He smiles down at the man's open eyes and slack mouth. "Habits like that'll kill you, mate."

He walks away into the night with hands in his pockets, whistling the man's tune.

* * *

Vaughan's is quiet.

He leaves his coat in a soggy pile on the rack beside the door, wipes his boots on the mat, crosses the threshold with papers in hand.

Two heads come up in the corner and now one of them is wreathed in a smile, and inside of him there is an answering tug, a pull, and so too is he touched by this instinctive stretching of the lips.

To view man as not meal but friend- to desire his respect, to hold onto his approval-

He is going soft, Bekah teases.

One hundred years ago he would have torn the great square-jawed head from the shoulders of this man called Michael Collins.

One hundred years ago he would have squashed this tiny ant man beneath his boot and ground down until at last he screamed no more, but one hundred years ago, sister, he needed no replacement for the two brothers who did not love him enough.

One hundred years ago, Elijah helped him up and pulled him back together and showed him how to go on with no sister beside him and no friend underneath him.

And now look at them, Rebekah.

Do you see how he does only what he has to, that he strikes out merely because his hand is forced- do you understand that Elijah had only to _choose him_, that he just needed his _brother_-

This man in _four months _has shown him what nine _hundred _years has not offered him, Bekah; loyalty- it is no complex challenge, no inaccessible goal, and yet how it eludes his own family, these creatures who with their multiple centuries have not grasped this most simple of concepts when this boy with his trifling two decades comprehends without effort.

"Mick." He nods.

"Any trouble, Nicholas? Liam's caught a whiff of uniforms around Parnell lately. Been on our toes for a raid."

"No trouble at all," he says, handing across the papers.

Collins unfolds the sheets, spreads them out across the table.

Tom cracks his neck and pops all the knuckles of his left hand, great firecracker bursts in his oversensitive ears. He hears the settling of the mattresses over his head, the creaking of the frames, the restless shifting of insomniac feet. "You want a drink, Nick? Bit of a bite in the air."

"No; I'll be on my way in a moment."

Collins' pen is a nail, his paper the chalkboard.

Tom breathes his great hurricane sighs and the insomniac feet thunder over his head and that bloody _pen_-

He feels his stiletto teeth puncture gum, tongue, lips and he shuts his eyes and tucks his hand with its officer's blood into his pocket, feels along lifeline trench and knuckle crease for all the little leftover flakes of this man's life, sees through his flickering lashes the ripe blue of Collins' wrist, the inviting white of Tom's throat-

He opens his eyes, blinks once, retracts his fangs.

His urges do not control him.

He is master, always and forever.

A shame brother, that you have never quite learned this lesson.

Collins folds the paper, hands it across the table to him, and back into his pocket it goes. "You got any plans for Christmas, Nicholas?" Collins asks, capping his pen.

"Just a quiet evening at home with Bekah, I'm sure. We're not much ones for the holidays."

"How is your sister?" Tom asks, and the poor besotted little idiot lights up, eyes, cheeks, all of him illuminated by this human failing.

Love, vanquisher of the rich, conqueror of the poor: a presiding deity, beneath the fist of which all will one day crumble.

The meek, the weak, these soft humans with their hearts in slave collars round their necks.

And dear sweet Bekah, who knows no better, who with her nine centuries should long ago have learned; always does this particular Achilles' heel trip her up- there is a boy who smiles at her, here a man who presses her hand, and how nice are their words in the beginning, how sweet their confectioner's promises: honey tongue, syrup smile, but remember, sister, where it all _leads_-

A brother's shoulder soaked, a mother's absence lamented, a man stalked unsuspecting from street corner to alleyway.

She makes such a mess when they break her, does Rebekah.

"Rebekah? Grand." Why, just the other day she licked her fingers clean of three trembling little RIC cowards who with their cries of "Fenian whore" turned her snarling upon them.

The young one with his beard in a peach down across his jaw tasted the best, he hears.

They always do.

"Tell her I said hello, would you?" Tom asks, so _hopefully_, he with collar taut, fate sealed.

"The boys and I'll be at Kidd's Back, Christmas morning, you want to join us, Nicholas."

He buttons his vest, collects his jacket. "I'll keep it in mind."

"You watch yourself out there, Nick."

He smiles and slips his arms into both sleeves, shaking the rainwater from his cuffs. "Of course."

He tips his hat to them both and makes his way out into Parnell Square, hands in his pockets, the officer's tune once more upon his tongue.

Catchy little thing, it is.

* * *

Mountjoy nets him his next encounter.

He grasps the boy by both shoulders, looks deep into his eyes, and just a bit of a push is all this one needs, quite the pliable little thing he is, this child with revolver wet in his hand, panic thick in his throat. "You run along and bring reinforcements as fast as you can, do you hear me? Michael Collins is at Vaughan's."

The boy flees.

He waits for the rumbling of the lorries, the dove flurry of the battlefield hearts.

The rain thins, the mist thickens, and in this pale shroud he waits, watch in his hand, hat cocked low upon his head.

The midnight people with their polished boots, painted cheeks, ragged trousers are swallowed away.

He stands alone, contemplating the lifeline trenches and the knuckle creases, the officer's blood in a brown paint across his hand.

On Capel St. there is a humming of wheels, a growling of engines, an aviary fluttering of twenty hearts set to flight.

He smiles.

* * *

"Raid!" he hisses, bursting in the door. "Off your bloody asses- there are two lorries just on the other side of Parnell!"

What an excellent mimic he is of the human condition: breath fast in his lungs, hand shaking upon the knob, voice high, knees loose- truly he has missed his calling with theatrics such as these.

"Fuck my ass!" Collins roars. "Harry and Liam are upstairs-"

"Nick, you get him out the back; I've got them, Mick."

Collins' hands dart out, gather up the paperwork in a thick snowfall on the table before him, shove these traitor's documents inside his jacket as fast as he can thrust them as Tom thunders away up the stairs, shouting as he goes.

The lorries stop to disgorge their passengers, close enough that now even Collins with his inferior ears hears their approach, and now to the stairs his eyes flit, brow crumpled, face torn, so much _confliction _when just beyond the door is the hangman's noose-

"Mick!" he snaps, drawing his revolver from his pocket. He jerks his head to the counter, and with a muttered oath Collins vaults over it, disappears into the 'employees only' section just beyond, and here come the officers, listen to their _hearts_, got 'im now, these little animal patterings proclaim, can't escape us this time, you Mick bastard-

He fires a shot into the first one through the door, smells the boy's ripe young blood, his pumping throat, emptying veins, and then he swings both legs over the counter, darts away into the hall beyond, kicks open the door to the back alley, listens to the rapid heartbeat thunder of Collins' boots ahead of him, the artillery clashing of the three boys scrambling down the fire escape above.

Boland descends with shirt untucked, boots in hand, Liam clinging with shaking white fingers, throwing himself from ladder to ladder, all of them slipping, tumbling, careening, Tom bringing up the rear with mussed hair, wild eyes, automatic in hand, envelope in his teeth-

"Fuck fuck fuck- _go_, boys!" he says through this stiff cream packet, spitting it down into his free hand as Boland staggers onto the final ladder and leaps from its top rungs to the pavement below, knees buckling, boots flying, and now down tumbles Liam, onto his knees, gouging his palms, up again in an instant, his blood pungent, his heartbeat intoxicating, more and more of this wet red elixir it pushes out, over his palms, down his fingers-

"Mick, _go_!" Tom snaps as Collins pauses to shove Boland's boots into his arms, hand on his elbow.

The British gush forward.

Clicking heels, jangling belts, rattling rifles- all of this a storm in his ears, the rain drowned out, the heartbeats muffled, Tom beside him, Collins just ahead of them, the mist a veil, the uniforms materializing through it-

"Make for Gresham!" Collins yells, pulling Boland along, Liam staggering forward on liquid knees; like startled prey he is off, gathering his gangly colt's legs underneath him, breath thin, sweat in a great pheromone cloud all around him-

"Nick-"

He steps forward as the first officer surges through the back door, smashes him back with swinging pistol and thrusting boot, and from this moist night with its climate in a smoke all around him appears the next, rifle to shoulder, and now at his side appears Tom, automatic thundering, and the officer's shoulder jerks, jets forth a spray of fragrant red-

They fire once more, simultaneously, and then Tom breaks for the alley, he close on his heels, the fire escape throwing cinders, the pavement deflecting bullets in little white stars, the rain a monsoon once more, the mist cleared away, their boots a thunderstorm upon the street.

Parnell is engulfed.

There is a third lorry blocking the entrance nearest Denmark; he skirts it, revolver still drawn, Tom breathing heavily beside him, the officers milling about like ants, the rain in its wartime volley on the streets muting their footsteps as they slip from pavement to grass.

Tom bellies out in the little garden out front of the darkened house whose front yard they cross, he in a crouch beside him, the revolver disappearing into his pocket, Tom's automatic slipped away as well, the British whistling, shouting, stamping about behind them.

He hears the tinny click click clicking of switches flipped, buttons pressed-

"Down!" he hisses.

The thin white fingers of their torches sweep the yard.

Tom hurls himself into the lilies compressed underneath him, crushing their petals to perfume, his face like chalk, his shoulders twitching with each breath he squashes flat inside his lungs.

He lies beside him, cheek to the dirt, hat jarred down onto the bridge of his nose.

Fantastic -the _fear _in this man- the bellows chest, the flexing throat, the rich rivers in their temptress coursing beneath his skin-

The rain fills his ears, catches in his lashes.

He listens to each little droplet land, stretch, roll itself from eye to cheek to chin.

Tom blinks, wets his lips, squeezes his eyes shut for just a moment.

The thin white fingers cross, jerk from porch to pathway to pavement.

The rain scythes these fingers, cuts them to ribbons, scatters them about in pieces, and as one of these little shards briefly touches one bright December flake to Tom's left hand he tenses, wrenches his eyes wide, lies staring across the grass with frozen face, statue fingers.

Nick, his eyes say but his lips do not.

Nick, _please_.

He reaches out to Tom's unlit right elbow, squeezes it for just a moment, tells him with tight fingers and encouraging nod what he cannot voice.

Believe, hope, _trust_.

And _look _at the boy- what hero worship is in his eyes- what _relief _there is in this hand that grips him back as the pieces dart away and the flake slithers off across the grass- when has he last been viewed in such a way- when has someone last laid their life down in his hands and believed so sincerely that he will not strangle it between his fingers-

What God did not grant humans in superior senses and advanced abilities, he made up for in this eel slickness of theirs.

Though you reach out to grasp them, to hold back, squeeze tight, they wriggle through. They tunnel, burrow deep, down your throat, into your chest, around your heart.

So few of them make this journey, these little chess pieces with their frail insect years.

But war makes comrades of all men. Through mud you wade, over corpses you skid, round the barbed wire, across the trenches, and all throughout this voyage marches little Tommy at your side, mortality with its guillotine shadow hung swaying over his head, pushing through, helping you on-

He has broken many of them: the ones who run he snaps across his knees; those who talk too much he rips from carotid to collarbone, and the looters, those vultures of the battlefield who rob enemy, friend, brother-

Those he eats.

Slowly.

Expendable little toys, all of them, with their eye blink lives.

But occasionally, there is one such as this, who gives him hope.

The boy lets out a shaky breath and grabs his shoulder with a smile, jostles him briefly, moves on in this cautious reptile slink of his, forearms gouging the flowers, boots digging down into their roots.

He slides over the grass after him.

Round the side of the house they make their way with bellies to the mud, cheeks smudged, nails full.

Tom lifts himself cautiously into a crouch, presses his back to the side of the house, kneels with hair plastered flat, cheeks streaming, lashes scintillating. "Jaysus, I thought they had us." He blows out another breath, shuts his eyes again. "Where are we? Mountjoy?"

"Backside of Denmark, looks like," he says quietly.

"Well, why don't we-"

"Wait."

He tilts his head, listening.

Two along the walkway with their torches, darting these long glittering cones in pebble skips over the black river of the street, the sunken marsh of the garden-

"Nick," Tom whispers, swallowing hard, reaching with trembling fingers for his automatic.

He crushes the boy's wrist in his hand. "You go around the back," he says into his ear. "You make your way down to Barry's, just up the road. If the roads are clear, move round to Gresham's. Do you understand?"

"And what are you going to do?" he hisses. "I'm supposed to just leave you then, am I?"

The British heels click click click; he blinks away the sunspot afterimages of their torches, smells their hot copper blood, sweating thighs, perspiring wrists.

"_Yes_," he snaps, bearing down on the boy's wrist, thrusting deep with his eyes.

With blank stare, stiff nod, Tom scuttles away, crouching as he runs, hand on his gun, breath rattling in his throat.

For Mikael to pick up his scent once more would be a shame; such a _commotion _they stir up, these Irishmen with freedom in their hearts and courage in their veins.

Truly he would like to see this little rebellion of theirs through.

So no tapping of the veins; no tearing of the throats; no shredding of these nervous young officers approaching with guns drawn and hackles raised.

He stands with both hands in the air and steps out from behind the house.

"On your knees!" the one on the left calls, pinning him in torch beam, pistol sights.

Sorry, mate.

He bows to no one.

He steps closer with hands still raised, smile on his face.

"_Stop_!"

He turns to the one on the left first, this boy with his itchy little trigger finger so pathetically eager to notch his first rebel into his bedpost. "I want you to have a sudden attack of conscience," he says, lowering his hands slowly to the boy's shoulders. "I want you to go to your commanding officer and tell him you've been working with Collins this whole time, and that you aided in the escape. You too," he directs to the boy on the right.

"But they'll execute us!"

His smile spreads. "I know. And so _young_, too. Shame, isn't it?"

* * *

He is swept up in Tom's arms as he steps through the door onto the Gresham's scuffed cream carpet.

Collins claps his shoulder, Boland grasps his hand, Liam pounds his back.

He is shaken, jostled, passed about between them.

Do you see this, he is a _part _of something- men they may be but they have chosen _him_- he has not compelled this hand on his shoulder or these arms about him, they have encircled him of their own free will, they smile to see him, they run not away but to -they _like _him, father- Nick the revolutionary, Nick the brave, Nick the _friend_-

A coward, father, is he- not to these men who praise his steel nerve, his courage under fire- should have seen him, like it was nothing and me about to piss me pants, Tom brags, with such _fire _in his eyes-

Brother, _look_.

Father, _see_.

Here is brotherhood.

Here is family.

Here are those who understand the bonds of loyalty, who know what it is to not leave a man behind, to offer him a hand as he is floundering, to pull him free, to reel him up.

* * *

Christmas is gray.

The clouds gather; the sky weeps.

If Ireland is to keep her coat of eternal spring, she must pay her dues in days such as these, with flooded streets, streaming windows, her white Christmas in the gutter, her chimneys smoking, all of the city black soot, gray cinders.

But inside, the light holds back this wet morning with its gay yellow. The glasses clink, the laughter swells, the cigars exhale.

And he is welcome to it.

He is _expected_.

He sits beside Collins on his stool, beer in one hand, cigar in the other, and he laughs until he can't breathe.

"Fuckin' _boggin_, Nick," Collins tells him with hand on his shoulder. "An' here's Liam, the fuckin' eejit, flattening the biddy like-"

"You shut your fuckin' mouth, Mick! Don't be startin' no rumors about me."

"Ain't got to start the rumors, you fucking caffler, ya' do that just fine yourself."

Liam flicks the butt of his cigarette at Collins; Mick catches it and good-naturedly lobs it back at him, and in a moment they are roughhousing among the tables, Collins with the smaller man in a head lock, Liam throwing short little punches into his ribs, the chairs kicked aside, the men hooting, bets placed, money exchanged, all of them in an uproar, his beer in a thin moustache along his lip, hand to his side-

"Two pound on the little one!" Tom cries. "Don't let him fuckin' push you around like that, boy!" He tosses his drink back and takes a drag from the cigarette of the man beside him, chasing it with his mouth as the man gestures from side to side with it, immersed in his conversation.

Collins triumphs. Liam ruffles his hair.

Tom takes up his boxer's stance and Collins circles, laughing, his hair in disarray, jacket askew, tie undone, and now they come together in a flurry, abandon this sport of the gentleman for their sloppy wrestler's knot.

He wipes the foam from his lip, brings his cigar to his mouth, sits holding this Cimmeron smoke in his throat.

Rebekah will complain, of course- touchy little thing doesn't like him coming home smelling of the pub, but she returns reeking of her men, and let's compare, shall we, sister? He rather thinks he'll come out top of that one.

He watches these boys who toil day by day with neck through the noose, that eternal drop just beneath their feet, and he is stirred.

They poke about this silt in which his soul has settled, hiding itself away, and to be reminded of it -how _hot _his chest goes, how tight his stomach can twist- what could possibly be _left _in a man like him, and yet they give him their smiles and they call out his name and something inside of him is lifted, all the way to his lips it reaches-

This is what you should have given him, Elijah.

This is all he required from you.

Tom twists out of Mick's arms with a laugh and glances a shot off his shoulder; he is seized in the man's great bear arms, screams mercy, flails out with feet, hands, tips over one of the tables, flips backward one of the chairs-

Elijah handled him in such a manner once.

Long ago in his chest beat the heart of a man who scrambled through woods, over hilltops, across village squares, who rode upon the back of his hero, that champion of the younger sibling: elder brother, immortal god, invincible warrior.

He inhales again.

He taps his foot upon the leg of his stool.

Elijah-

He shuts his eyes.

You _asked _for it, brother- all he has ever demanded is your _loyalty_, that you only _honor _the bond you forged- is that so _bloody hard_, Elijah- is it so bloody _difficult _to pay obeisance to your own _family_, Elijah-

"Nick!" Tom calls, and in his voice is warmth, laughter, so _many _bloody things-

His father found him wanting.

His mother deemed him unworthy.

But there is a special union between men who have lived and breathed and thumbed their nose at mortality, stronger than marriage, deeper even than this familial bond promised to him for all time, broken in mere centuries, and they have offered it up without thought.

They have drawn him in.

Take your scorn, father.

Have your rejection, mother.

But never will you take this from him. Never can you have these smiles that are for him and these hands that stretch out for his own.

* * *

He walks Camden with hands in his pocket, fingers round his revolver.

Tom nods to him from the opposite side of the street.

The lorry with its back full of Tans and Auxiliaries creeps slowly along, the men bristling, the rifles glinting, the March sun in full strength overhead.

Up the road a child steps from sweet shop to pavement, undoes the ribbons on her new caramels, leaves these thin red streamers on the sidewalk, skips away with her sharp orange cream breath and her sticky fingers.

In Tom's pocket is the clinking of a pin pulled, the rustling of a bomb unearthed.

His arm cocks.

The little sphere in his hand takes flight.

He listens to the whistling of its arc, yanks his gun as this little sphere rattles with a great crash between the feet of the lorry men who spill over its sides with shouts, curses, warning cries-

The grenade blows.

The lorry is cut to shrapnel; the shards fly; the officers dive, roll to their knees, bring their rifles to bear-

Tom unloads his revolver into the throat of one, the shoulder of another, hand, leg, hip, all of these are clipped, torn, battered about, the men in piles, some to never move again, others already crawling, slithering along to cover, gun metal to the pavement, boot leather against the fallen-

He fires.

The hammer slams, the gun bucks, the cylinders click.

Once, twice, six times he fires, all of these rounds finding their targets, his steady hand moving on down the line, from left to right, duck your heads, hide your faces, mates, won't do a bit of good- do you see a waver in his fingers; do you sense a vacillation in his conscience-

Nowhere in him do your cries resonate or your screams linger.

Tom has emptied his gun; he flees away into the streets, and together they make their way from alley to alley, from yard to yard, sprinting, hurdling, throwing themselves over fences, up walls, spurred on by the British heels and the lorry rumblings.

* * *

"If you don't mind, I'd like a bit of space for my _things_, Nik," Rebekah snaps, holding up a revolver she has discovered in one of the drawers of her bureau.

He looks up from his sketching with eyebrow cocked.

"If you'd help smuggle them, they'd be out of here that much faster."

"Is this bloody war over yet? The British have been here for ages; why don't your little friends just get used to it?"

"Because, Bekah, some people do not merely roll over and take what life has handed to them. Unlike others I could mention, who have been doing quite a bit of rolling over lately." He looks down with a little smirk.

"Don't tease, Nik. I can't find one I like."

"Why don't you take Tom for a spin round the block? Then I can stop listening to him prattling on about you."

She moves to the closet, flings it wide, stands contemplating the dresses she spends each day perusing for a bloody hour before deciding to don the most hideous of them all.

Really, sister, an artist for a brother and you can't conjure up a single _modicum_ of fashion sense- it's no trick at all, you simply do not _combine _those colors you hold so reverently in your hand-

He sets aside his charcoal with a sigh. "The purple one."

She looks over her shoulder, chin cocked high, eyebrow lifted imperiously. "Did I ask for your opinion?"

"Obviously not, if you are for a moment contemplating that rag."

"You're such a snob."

"It's nothing to do with that, I merely have _eyes_, Bekah."

"I like the green one."

"I wouldn't use the green one to clean my hands after a day in the studio."

"If _you _like the purple one so much, _you _wear it," she snaps. "It's matronly. I'd look like an old lady."

"It's the latest fashion in London. You know I'd never outfit you in anything but the best."

She wrinkles her nose. "You smell, Nik."

"You don't think that's a slightly juvenile tack to take, Rebekah, just because I don't care for your taste in-"

"I mean _literally_, you ass. Didn't you clean dinner off your collar?"

"I haven't eaten yet."

She flicks her hand dismissively in the air. "You always come home smelling of blood. What was it this time? Another ambush?"

"Bit of a dust-up at Devlin's, actually. Few RIC poked their noses in where they didn't belong."

She rolls her eyes and turns away with gown in hand, puckering her lips thoughtfully at it.

He returns to his sketchpad.

There is a moment that is as close to peace as he will ever get with his hypersensitive ears and nose and mouth. Her skirts rustle, his charcoal scratches. Beyond the window is the honking of traffic, the laughter of children, the nervous breaths of men with their folded papers and their tucked-away guns.

The world is an assault, for one such as him.

But behind this window there is only Rebekah with her bright summertime scent of orange and cardamom, humming as she works her way from dress to dress, fingers nonchalant, hands unhurried, and he stops to watch her for a moment, this sister who loves him always, who sticks by him despite.

In the tenth century Mikael tried to pry them apart, lovely little Bekah and spineless half-man Niklaus. Put down your drawings, you little weakling; stop mooning over the horse, you stupid coward; don't laugh so loudly, boy -don't cry, do not _ever_ cry- Rebekah, do you _see _this- your brother is not a man, leave him be, stop _coddling _him-

And when she crawled into his bed to bury her head in his torn back, to cry over his ripped shirt, dirty knees, skinned hands- so too did Mikael attempt to end this, to send her on her way, to shut him away in the dark with only his father's punishment in stripes across his back.

But little Bekah-

She always came back.

She crept on cautious toes, through the dark which frightened her so, round the creaking boards, over the silent planks, hopping from wooden slat to slat, hands shaking, eyes streaming, and when she at last reached his room it was her who needed to be soothed, who had fears to be calmed and monsters to be vanquished, but he never minded, you see, cradling that little head against his chest, spinning tales with lowered voice of woodland fairies and deep-sea mermaids.

He was not alone.

If father did not love him Rebekah adored him twice as much.

If mother did not protect him Bekah sheltered him more than adequately.

If Elijah did not have time to play Rebekah tagged along for the game.

When she grew too old to hold his hand she squeezed his shoulder.

She stood by his side.

I won't let father break you, she told him.

Don't worry, Nik.

I will always be here.

I am your _sister_, Nik, and as long as you have me he cannot hurt you- you will never be _alone_, Nik, do you understand? No matter what he claims, no matter how he tries.

Mother is dead, father on the prowl, Finn in his box, Kol rotting alongside him.

Elijah gone.

But there is still Rebekah.

There will always be Rebekah.

She stops her rifling and turns with another gown in hand, brow furrowed, and he lifts an eyebrow, tilts his head. "Nik," she says quietly, kneading this bit of fabric in her hands, lips thin, eyes distant. "Are you still mad at Elijah?"

He tightens his jaw and focuses on his paper, the charcoal creaking between his fingers.

"He didn't mean to hurt you."

"What Elijah intended is none of my concern. He betrayed us, Rebekah. It's really quite simple."

"I know," she says, and there is a little waver in her voice, a breaking-up, and don't do this sweetheart, not over someone who does not deserve your tears, who is not worthy of your time- Elijah made his choice and it was not them but look at _him_, Rebekah, here at your side forever and always- do you really need anyone else, sister, when he will never leave-

"I just wanted us to be a family, Nik. That's why I went to New Orleans in the first place- because I was ready to forgive, because I was tired of being _alone_-"

He flips his sketchpad shut, drops his charcoal with a hollow little _tink _against its cover.

"I know, I know," she protests before he can say anything, hastily wiping her eyes. "I'm wasting my breath, talking about him. He is nothing, there is only us, etc. etc."

He stands with both hands in his pockets, crosses the room to stand before her as she turns her attention to the gown in her fingers, fussing with its bodice, shaking out its skirt, cheeks still a little moist, lashes still a touch wet.

"Why don't we go and get you something to eat?" he asks quietly, dabbing away at her tears with his thumb. "You know you get moody when you're hungry."

"I'm not hungry, Nik."

He tucks a stray strand of hair back behind her ear and she sniffles, smiles just a touch, holds up the dress she has crumpled into a little lemon ball in her hand. "What about this one?"

"It looks like something by that horrible Picasso."

"Shut up," she says, and gives him a playful shove that slams him back against the wall, denting its plaster. "You're only jealous that his paintings are so much more popular than yours."

"Excuse my comments however you like, Bekah, but that dress is a monstrosity."

"_You're _a monstrosity, you ogre. I need a girlfriend; I can't trust your opinions at all." She flashes to the closet and tosses the gown unceremoniously back onto its hanger. "I can't decide- I'll just have to go out in this old thing, even though the whole city's probably seen me in it a million times."

"Just compel them to forget."

She smoothes her hair. "All right; I suppose I'm up for a bit of dessert. I hear a few children just up Kildare. Nothing too lean; tonight I'm treating myself."

"I have it on reliable authority that the O'Reilly's keep their ten-year-old well-fed. He is all yours, Bekah." He offers his arm with a smile; she takes it with a smirk.

"Oh, Nik; you do spoil me."

* * *

Rebekah at last crumbles.

While he smuggles in the coke for the bomb factories she buries revolvers in her skirts, and smitten little Tom- poor lad cannot stop singing her praises, as brave as she is beautiful, what a woman, if only Ireland had more like her, etc. etc.

Really it's all a bit much, and the boy is hardly a poet.

He likes the boy. Truly he does.

But if he hears one more stumbling attempt at a dinner invitation, he's going to rip out his spleen.

They run arms up and down Dublin, depositing them in a safe house here, a hotel there, Rebekah complaining all the while, Tom over the moon, Collins with one eye fixed always upon the British.

A revolution is always on the move; it seeks its next meal wherever one is offered, falls gratefully into bed beside three of his comrades though they must stack themselves one nearly on top of the other. A mattress which bristles its little needles of hay into the back is always the superior of a January field; a cottage home to as many rats as men is never the inferior of the open roads with their English scouts as far as the eye can see.

He lives as the men do, on the run, crouched in basements, huddled in churches, breath held, ears alert, eyes attentive, and though Rebekah pokes her fun at these little games he plays, he enjoys himself immensely among these rough country men who will not be stifled any longer.

Tom cheers him; Collins amuses him; dour Liam with his sleepwalker's shuffle bests him in one out of three chess matches.

In brief moments of peace, these little interims which crop up so infrequently and are cherished so dearly, they drink too much, talk too loudly, fight, forgive, fling themselves with all their youth into this rejoicing.

They mourn their losses, trumpet their successes.

They teeter with arms round his shoulders, voices raised, glasses lifted: to us, long live Cathleen ni Houlihan, God bless her, fuck them Anglo bastards, carry on the good work, boys.

But they are still boys, these young revolutionaries with peppermint in their cheeks and piss and vinegar in their veins.

They have only one life, and they want to live it.

They are willing to die, afraid to fall.

In all soldiers there is this struggle, a friction between cause and instinct: the brave man wants to die for his principles; the wise one wishes to survive for them. The dead do not carry on an ideology; corpses cannot shoulder a philosophy. A leap into the abyss accomplishes only an eternity of dark.

Only the living may illuminate.

And two decades- it is so little, just a handful, even a mortal's life has just barely begun-

But in watching Collins you see none of this friction, nothing of these struggles; when the other men flag he bolsters; when a dispatch must be gotten through and the way is too rough, the route too dangerous, off he pops on that bicycle of his; where one man fails he slips in to succeed.

He smiles so often. He walks so spryly.

But in the tiny guest bedroom of a sympathizer, his great weight sloping the bed down to the right, hands folded like a child's beneath his head, he does not sleep.

There is a restless shifting in the man, a tossing and turning: nothing is settled about him. Belly, thoughts, bile, all of these must be a storm, roiling, pitching, surging on, his plans in a tangle, his fingers in a sweat.

He hears the man's great heart beating, the bobbing of his Adam's apple, the roaring of troubled blood.

Collins' breaths rattle in his chest.

His hands shift upon the sheets.

His feet kick from his impatient legs the wool blanket draped over them both.

He opens his mouth to speak, shuts his lips to hold inside.

This man is not weak, and he does not desire help, he needs no words to help him through, no hand to hold him fast.

And yet.

He was once a boy who wanted to be strong, mate, and he understands well the squaring of the shoulders, the blinking of the eyes, all of these ways in which the tide is held at bay, pressed back, compressed slowly layer by layer into all the spaces where the conscience no longer reaches.

If he is unaccustomed to the reaching out of man, so also is he unfamiliar with stretching out first.

But in the dark he finds this man's shoulder with his fingers, and he squeezes tightly, one brief pulse -here is someone, mate, what matters is that you are not alone- and Collins touches his wrist, returns this one brief pulse with one of his own-

And beside this frail young man with his strong fingers and his steady heart, he shuts his eyes, and he smiles.

* * *

There is a girl

Pretty little thing.

She flutters her lashes, ducks her head, lights up so brightly when his eyes turn from carnage to carnality.

From this lowered head she aims her looks coyly, smoothing her skirts, patting her hair.

Sinead is her name.

She looks at him with stars in her eyes, apples in her cheeks, the lashes going, going, her tone not so innocent as her young cream face, her playful little hands snatching from his head the hat she perches upon her own, her laughter loud, her adoration clear.

Tch tch tch, love. He is wise to woman's Janus ways.

The lashes one day, the screams the next.

He walks with her upon his arm down quieter streets where there are no bombs or blood or pathetic screaming of the men with their limbs in shattered doll appendages all about them, and he listens to her hopes for Ireland, her ardor for this green gunpowder country with one hand always to the fuse.

He _understands_; he wants only for his great motherland to be _free_, to lift the British boot from its neck, to go about its days unchained, to pass the years not alive on its knees but dead on its feet if need be. Gladly will he give his _life _for this magnificent native land of his, down with these bloody Anglo _bastards_, long live _Ireland_, soon is its day approaching, sweetheart-

He holds her face softly.

He kisses her gently.

In the home of her father he undresses her carefully, lays her back slowly, takes her roughly with her nails in claws down his shoulders, hair in a halo underneath her, and when her father arrives home from a protracted drill with the Volunteers, he escapes out her window with pants hastily buckled, shirt in his hand, hat sideways.

He kisses her good-bye between smothered giggles and vaults the low wall out back to sort out his clothes in the alley beyond.

They lie together in the garden out back of her childhood home with hands clasped, heads together, smelling the flowers, listening to the bees, Dublin in a storm all about them, their bond a refuge, their relationship a sanctuary, what _would _she do without him-

She loves him.

He eats her.

* * *

**New Orleans, 2013**

They'll start by splitting up the city: those who are for Marcel, those who are against, those who are neither.

He needs to know who is on the edge, who needs only a nudge, who is entrenched, who will never be turned.

"So send me out there," she insists. "I can get anyone to talk."

He just looks at her.

Marcel is on the prowl, Sophie chained to her, she _gets _it, but this is her life and she has chosen to be player and not pawn, and it is ok that he is scared for her, she understands that he does not want to lose her, but he cannot hold her back.

Love- it's not like that. You let it go and you hope it doesn't run itself right into the sun, you pray and you worry and you lie awake waiting for it to come back, but you don't hold it until it beats itself to death against the bars.

It should never be a jail.

When he relents, she sees it in every line of him.

His jaw firms, his shoulders sag, his eyes skip away.

But this is another step, and she is so _proud _of him, and when he presses one of her hands between both of his, she reaches up, and she touches his cheek, and the way he just leans into this contact-

He has always looked too deep.

The others- they skimmed along her surface, splashed about in bubbly blonde kiddie pool Caroline, but they never bothered to dive a little lower, to look a little farther, and yet every freaking _time _he looks at her there is so much in his eyes.

He believes she is capable. He knows she is clever.

"You can start on Decatur St.," he tells her quietly. "The Hotel Mazarin is, of course, already spoken for, so we'll need to canvas the surrounding area, go over the city street by street, business by business. Quietly."

"Which means you need to stay home."

His lips twist into a humorless smirk. "Marcel knows your face too, love."

"Yeah, but you said that Michael Collins guy you ran around with in the 1900s moved around Dublin for years without any disguise because of the way he presented himself. Like a businessman, not a terrorist, right? And he slipped right under the police's noses, doing that. Do you really think all of Marcel's guys have my face memorized? You're the identifying factor, Klaus. I'm the blonde who hangs around you- that's how they identify me. Take you out of the picture, and there's my disguise, right there."

"You listen too attentively sometimes," he says, and touches the end of her nose with his fingertip, his dimples showing themselves just a little at last.

"So here's what we do. We leave together, right? And then I duck into a bathroom somewhere or something, you distract the guys who we know are going to be following us, and then I walk back out all touristy. Hair up under a baseball cap, French Quarter map in my hand, whatever. I'll keep an eye out for anyone watching me, thanks to my new handy dandy spy-spotting skills, and then I'll duck into the Bienville House. And we'll see which team they're playing for."

"And I just let you loose into the city, without anyone to look out for you."

"Where I will protect myself, if I have to."

He drops her hand, looks away, strokes his chin, and then his eyes shift back to hers and there is just that hint of a smile again, that little suggestion of those dimples she wouldn't mind kissing, if she weren't practicing this whole self-restraint thing, and now he cocks his head contemplatively and lifts both eyebrows and he sets her free.

"All right."

She can feel her smile in her cheeks, crumpling up the corners of her eyes, everything stretched, bunched up, lit so brightly, and now suddenly he seizes her, draws her in close, holds her face in both his warm, warm hands to roughly kiss her forehead.

"But you get out, the _moment _something seems wrong- the very second you feel uncomfortable, do you understand me?" he says against her forehead, holding her for just as long as she will let him.

* * *

She has lunch at Iris, right next to the double doors looking out over the back garden, and the food is so ridiculously delicious she nearly forgets to tune into all the little sounds around her, the scraping of the forks, the working of the throats, the waiters with their starched white shirts in a paper crackling about their wrists and necks.

She pushes past these, to the man behind the bar: cheating wife, unpaid mortgage, blah blah; the two waitresses bustling around the steaming food cart beside table four: check out her new earrings aren't they to die for, got them at the little boutique down the street (and they so totally _are_ to die for, but she's here on a job, and she'll get the name of that little boutique later); the woman with her shiny gold manager tag askew on her shirt: sir I don't cook the food but I'll be sure to relay your comments to the chef-

Dessert is set down in front of her.

Orange sugar cookie sorbet, oh _God_, it's like a freaking orgasm in her mouth and only two hundred calories, and with her substantial vampire capabilities she can even mouth orgasm and eavesdrop at the same time: isn't being dead just freaking _grand_?

The couple to her right wants a baby; the man on her left is late for a meeting.

She clicks her spoon against the inside of her little white dish, watches the opening of the restaurant, narrows in on the lobby just beyond it. The man behind the desk sends his fingers in a rapid staccato over the keyboard of his computer; the valet out front squeals the tires of his latest acquisition a little too enthusiastically; the employees dart, the guests mingle.

She stands.

She throws down enough to cover lunch and a tip, and slips through into the lobby.

The man behind his computer looks up.

She sets her hands down on the counter, leans forward just a little, gapes her shirt, flutters her lashes. "Hi. You couldn't tell me if the owner's in today, could you?"

He is not.

Marcel? Of course he knows Marcel.

Wonderful guy.

He and the owner are great friends.

And yes of course he would be more than happy to forget this little conversation.

* * *

"Klaus!" she calls outside the Café du Monde, tapping one foot on the sidewalk. "_Klaus_!"

He materializes in front of her. "How could you possibly have spotted me-"

"I didn't," she interrupts. "I just know you. You're supposed to let me do this on my own, not lurk around in the background, you creeper."

He holds out his hands helplessly. "One step at a time, love." He smiles. "You're doing magnificently, by the way."

"Thanks. Now get lost."

"I have a better idea. Why don't we call it a wrap for today, hmm? You can tell me everything you've learned later. Over dinner. At Arnaud's?"

"I have an even better idea."

He steps closer, hands behind his back, both eyebrows raised. "Really?"

"Yes. We're going home. You need to relax- you've been super uptight lately, about Marcel, his witch, this whole Sophie thing- you just sit around all day in that office of yours studying a bunch of maps. There's this thing Elena and I used to do whenever we were getting freaked out by finals or boys or whatever, and you're going to do it with me."

"Am I now?" he asks, raising his eyebrows higher, digging his dimples deeper.

* * *

"This little secret of yours is getting drunk?"

She flashes across his living room, foyer, whatever the hell you call these super fancy gajillionaire accommodations, bottle in her hand, finger tapping thoughtfully against her lips. "No, this little secret of mine is getting _hammered_. We need some music."

He gestures to the shelf in front of her from his seat on the couch, folding both hands on his knee.

"Bach? Mozart? No."

"These collections feature some of their most well-constructed pieces-"

"And I'm sure they're amazing. But this is not drinking music. This is study music, look-how-cultured-I-am music, my-brain-is-better-than-your-brain-music. What we need is flail music."

"'Flail music'?" He lifts an eyebrow, gives her his little I'm-waiting-amuse-me-peasant smirk.

"Flail music," she repeats firmly. "The kind of songs that when your coordination's off but you think it's not are just _there_, not because they're good, not because they even make sense, but because they have these ridiculous how-many-seizures-can-I-make-these-people-appear-t o-be-having-in-three-minutes beats. That's what we need for tonight." She snaps her fingers at him. "Where's your laptop?"

"In my bedroom."

She reaches it in a blink, whisks back down the stairs carrying it tucked beneath her arm.

She tosses him a bottle and sets the laptop down on the couch beside him. "Ok, Mikaelson, prepare to be swept away on a wave of booze and auto-tuned crap which is actually going to sound pretty damn good by the time we're done, thanks to that aforementioned booze."

* * *

She does most of the dancing, flashing back and forth across the living room (foyer?) with her second vodka bottle in hand, spinning, twirling, bringing this second vodka bottle in an impromptu microphone to her lips, her coordination a little off, her notes just a teeny bit out of tune, and he sits on the couch watching, and he laughs until he cries.

"How many have you had, you billion-year-old lightweight?" she asks, crossing the carpet in a flicker of a stride to take the tumbler from his hand, pushing her bottle between his fingers to take its place.

He takes a swig. "Well, I'm a bit past drunk, sweetheart, though I'm not sure I've quite reached 'hammered'."

"And your grammar is still annoyingly perfect. But you should at least have enough in you to get up and sing along with 'I Love It', right?"

"Absolutely not."

"Come on!" She takes the bottle from him, drinks, hands it back. "Actually, you know what, no. You'll probably hit every single note completely perfectly even with an entire freaking liquor store in you, which is so not fair- you've had a gajillion years to get good at everything."

He smiles. "Actually, I'm a horrible singer."

"Really?"

"There was a famous castrato in the 18th century called Farinelli who, once retired, turned to instruction, claiming quite insistently that he could teach anyone to sing. He gave up on me after two weeks."

"Seriously?" She pauses. "Can I hear it?"

"Not with an entire warehouse of liquor in me, Caroline."

"Oh, come _on_. I won't laugh. I promise."

"I highly doubt that, love."

"Ok- how about this: If I laugh, I'll let you beat me at Angry Birds."

He glowers up at her and drinks. "I don't need anyone to _let _me win, sweetheart. I'm-"

"The Original Badass, the supernatural anti-Christ, slayer of many, kicker of puppies, I know. Your score's still, like, two thousand points lower than mine." She goes for the death blow, eyes wide, lashes working just a little, and look at him melt, soften just for her- the _power _she holds over this thousand-year-old man with his slain villages and his toppled monarchies-

She snatches the bottle away from him, stands drinking with one eyebrow lifted challengingly.

He stands, takes it back, drinks without taking his eyes from hers, leaves the bottle against his lips for so long she wonders if he is tasting her, savoring her cherry lip gloss and her cream vodka saliva.

"Come on," she implores. "You take yourself _so _seriously. Make a jackass out of yourself just this once."

"And why should I do that?"

"I already gave you an incentive."

He gives her a look. "Besting you at Angry Birds is hardly what I would call an incentive, Caroline."

"So you admit you're losing to me. And that you need me and my awesome skills to back off so you can catch up-" She breaks off laughing as he gives her another look. "Ok, fine. What do you want?"

He smiles. "Well now, that's a loaded question, isn't it?"

He has her up against the wall so _fast_, his hands hooked beneath her knees, face half an inch away, and instinctively she locks her ankles together in the small of his back, and even more instinctively she grabs for his curls, fists them in clumps between her fingers- so much for this whole self-_control _thing-

"Are you happy here?" he whispers, impaling her with those eyes once again, driving them all the way through, burrowing them deep, but they have done this whole soul-gazing thing before, this intense piercing, this concentrated skewering, and ten months out, she would like to be impaled by something a little more tangible, if you know what she means.

Screw self-control anyway: it's as overrated as last year's Jimmy Choos.

She pushes slightly against his chest, works her heels impatiently against his back because she knows he will drop her -murderer, manipulator, whatever you can say about him he will not force himself on her- and just as she predicts he lets his hands slip out from beneath her knees, takes a step back, stare still intense, dimples showing just faintly-

She rips off his shirt, and she's pretty sure she startles even him.

She pushes him down onto the couch, throws herself on top, grabs his face in her hands, squeezes his legs between her own, and now suddenly the world upends, she is spun sideways, slammed down, their roles reversed, his thighs straddling hers, her hands captured in his, and with his necklaces in a cool itch against her collarbone, he leans down and he presses his lips right to her ear.

"You didn't answer my question."

She blinks.

He smiles, waiting.

* * *

An entire century, it takes her to answer.

He waits holding a breath he does not need to exhale and where his fingers pin down her wrists he feels the thin layer of his anxiety, the slight tremor in their tips.

And then she smiles, and this breath he does not need to exhale is taken away.

"Yeah. Actually, I kinda' am."

* * *

Her shirt disintegrates beneath his hands.

He presses three hot kisses to her stomach, one just a little higher than the next, still holding her down by the wrists, his skin hot against her, his lips too slow, his hips too fast, oh _God_, he knows how to use his tongue- over her abs he circles it, into her bra he dips it-

And then he leaves her.

She lies stunned for a moment, blinking up at the ceiling.

"_Seriously_?" she snaps, and she hears him laughing up in his studio.

* * *

Perdido is dark.

The cars with their blind white eyes sit silently waiting, the street a puddle underneath them, all the city still in a slow liquefaction though the sun has long since set.

The tourists complain, the locals soldier on.

He waits for them all to clear off, one shoulder against the lamppost beside him, arms crossed, eyes assessing.

"What are we doing here?" Caroline asks.

"In a moment, love," he tells her.

The humans slowly disperse, in trickles, streams, gradual drips and drops.

She stands so close her perfume is nearly a distraction.

The last of them trails away, dragging his daughter by her sticky candy-glued fingers.

"Move a little to the right, would you?" he asks, pushing himself off the lamppost, uncrossing his arms, and she complies with her own arms crossed, eyebrows high.

He rears back and kicks the base of the lamppost, toppling it with a shriek, right into the glass double doors of City Hall it plunges, and though of course he understands that these little slivers of glass are barely a wasp's prick to her, still he shields her with his back as they fly, his arms tight about her waist.

"What the _hell_, Klaus?" she yells over the screaming of the alarm, hands to her ears. "I thought you said you needed information on Marcel."

"I do. But the minions make the man in this case, Caroline."

She stares at him. "Would you care to elaborate?"

He smiles down at her. "Watch."

"And learn?"

"From the best, love- you couldn't ask for a better teacher."

"Yeah, my illustrious career in breaking and entering is really off to a fabulous start. I'm sure this is what the school board meant when they pre-approved my Valedictorian speech and told me I was headed for great things."

He smiles again and lets her go. "The minds of your little school board are far too small to possess even the slightest inkling of what you're capable of."

"Oh, sweet talk? Sorry, not going to cut it."

"Still sore about the other night, are we?"

"Excuse you, Mr. Ego, but no. I was drunk, which is the only reason any of it happened."

"I know," he says as at last the alarms cease their cries and from deeper within the city another shriek is taken up. He reaches out to touch her bottom lip with his thumb, runs it down over her mouth to the subtle dip in her chin.

He drops his voice, leans in close. "But one day, you're not going to be drunk, sweetheart."

* * *

He greets the police with warm smile, hands behind his back. "Good work, lads. Fantastic response time. Now, do you see that pole? Terrible thing- drunk driver careened right into it, knocked it right through the door. Saw the whole thing with my own eyes. Go on back to the station and write up a report about it, would you? Someone will be by in the morning to take care of this little mess."

They nod, tip their hats, step back into the cars with their lights in a garish paint across her face.

"So now what?" she asks.

"Now, we take that fantastic attention to detail you have, and we apply it to something that isn't catering menus or floral arrangements."

* * *

The files on the Hotel Mazarin will list all of its employees, he explains, name, social security number, all of the little minutiae which will give them a place to start, an enemy to identify. No longer will Marcel hold the city restrained beneath invisible tentacles, here one arm, there another, nudging, manipulating, repositioning.

She slides behind him to reach the file cabinet on his left, pressing herself closer than is necessary, and he pauses with his hands full of folders.

"What am I looking for?" she wants to know.

"Anything concerning the hotel. Put it in a stack here," he indicates, setting his own pile down on the floor beside his left knee. "We'll pull them all and then sort them. The building plans would be helpful as well. "

"Those would probably be in the Engineering division," she says absentmindedly, squinting down at the folder in her hand. She looks up to meet his eyes for a brief moment, then flicks her gaze back down to the file she flips open across her knee and holds pinned with one hand. "I interned really briefly at the city when I was fifteen. Motherly connections." She closes her file with a snap and drops it onto the little cream-colored mound between them. "So, you gather all of this information on Marcel's people, and then you, what, start taking them out?"

He studies the document between his fingers, furrows his brow, lays it aside. "No. Not all of them- I'll kill a few, just the ones who present the most immediate threat."

"And the others you're going to use. See if you can turn them on Marcel, get them to be your little spies."

This is what he loves about her, the little minx- quite the quick learner she is. "Beauty and brains- quite the lethal combination, sweetheart."

"Enough to fell a big bad heartless hybrid."

He looks up with a little smile. "After a thousand years you come to accept nothing less than the best."

"I'll give you that one," she replies with her own little smile.

"Does that mean I'm forgiven for my little transgression the other night?"

"Oh, no, it is not that easy. You've been out of the game a long time if you think you can get a woman to drop her grudge that fast."

He balances on his heels, hands folded between his knees, and watches her sort with a smile.

"I'll make it up to you when you're ready."

* * *

They sit side by side at the desk in his study, heads bent, hands touching, he indicating places of significance with little taps of his finger, she following along with her own, feeling the route out for herself, and though he does most of the strategizing, he wants to know her opinion on each of his plans, to understand her thoughts, to hear her concerns, to be told of her desires and her doubts.

"Danny Graber will have to be eliminated, as will Ashley Benson, Thomas McConnell and Bryce Decker."

"Ok, you hardly even _know _anything about them. They could be useful."

"I don't care. They all live within a block of the Ritz. I'm not leaving any of Marcel's people that close to Sophie until we can get the two of you unlinked."

"Which you could probably do more easily, if you hadn't killed slash pissed off half the witches in this town."

"'Half' is a very exaggerated estimation, Caroline. At most, I slaughtered a handful of them. And in future I assume they'll be much less eager to kidnap those I care about."

"Ok, Sophie is confined to one little hotel room, and she's _surrounded_. I mean, how many people do you have watching her? I think we can let those four live until we figure out whether or not they could play totally integral parts in all of this."

"No."

Ok, you want her opinions, then how about you _consider _a couple of them- she is not ignorant to the risks here, but all of life is a hazard, danger at every corner, werewolves and witches and hunters oh my, let her take her _chances_.

"Why don't you just compel her to reverse the spell?"

"Do you honestly think I haven't considered that? She's spent too much of her life around vampires to be manipulated so easily."

"So she's on vervain?"

"Vervain, or perhaps some kind of little witchy circumvention. We had a nice chat the other day and she was unimpressed with all of my methods of persuasion. My hands are a bit tied here, love. She knows I have no leverage against her- anything I do to her happens to you as well."

She leans forward in the high-backed chair she has pulled close to his desk, leather creaking underneath her, his smell all around her, and she folds her hands over the map spread out before them, cocking her head. "What if we don't have her reverse the spell?" He opens his mouth to protest and she holds up a hand. "No, just listen. You don't have any leverage over her- well, she doesn't have any leverage over you either. I'm the leverage, right? And that's gone now, at least for her. You can't do anything to her- well, she can't do anything to me."

"She's got an entire pack of irate werewolves after her, Caroline."

"Probably not an entire pack. Just a few rebels, right, the ones pissed off about how whoever's in charge has handled this whole situation? How many times has Marcel tried to have me assassinated in the last few weeks or so? People are trying to kill me anyway, on pretty much a daily basis. The risks aren't really increasing that much, staying linked to her. And really everything is probably balancing out in the end, because we've eliminated any threat from her end."

He contemplates this for a moment, sagging backward in his chair, fingers steepled, eyes thoughtful. "Compelling argument."

"So…?"

"I'm still killing all of them."

"Ugh! Would you just _think_-"

"_No_. It isn't a negotiation," he snaps.

"No, it's a freaking _monarchy _with you-"

"I am not taking any risks, Caroline," he hisses, leaning across the scant gap between their chairs, sticking his face right in hers, his fingers tight on her arm, his breath hot on her cheek, that warm spiced aftershave in a cloud all around her- personal _bubble_, asshole. "As soon as I can find a way to get her or another witch to undo the spell, it's done. And she is dead."

"You can't just _kill _her-"

"I can and I will."

"She's been here for a long time, building up resistance against Marcel- you don't think, if you're going to bring Marcel down, that she might come in slightly handy-"

"I don't care how useful she is. It doesn't matter, after what she did."

"Ok, I know you haven't been around very long and probably haven't been introduced to a little concept known as 'forgiveness', but you can, once in a while, let things go, if it's for the greater good and all-"

"I thought you were _dead_, Caroline-"

"That was _your fault_- you're the one who decided to just snap her freaking neck-"

"And do you think I haven't punished myself enough for that?" he roars, out of his chair in a flash, the table overturned with one blurred swipe of his hand.

The silence that follows is absolute.

She feels her stomach quailing, her heart thundering, hears the rapid fluttering of his own butterfly pulse.

And yet how _still _everything is.

"I thought-" His voice breaks just a little, wavers on these two simple syllables, and something in her twitches, all the way from fingertips to feet it runs, a little white jolt that hooks her nails into the armrests.

"For a moment, I thought I had killed you. That I had another thousand years to live with that, and a thousand after that. Do you _understand_-" He breaks off, turns away, brings one hand to his mouth to run it down over the blonde stubble of his jaw.

He is so pale, wound-tight, hunched up, and it's not like she doesn't have a pretty good idea of what she somehow inexplicably means to him, but the _look _on his face as he stands with eyes shut, thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose-

He came to her already broken.

Maybe he has never been whole.

But he plays at it, with his posturing, his grandstanding, with all his thousand fricking layers more ugly than the last, and so in moments like these, when he is just a man, when he has been peeled back, opened up- _God _she wants to hold him, smooth his hair, touch his cheeks, tell him it's ok, this is not a weakness, don't shut it away, it is all right for it to be seen-

And always always _always _he folds it back, lets his next terrible deed eclipse it, heaps and stacks and buries deep, but this time she is out of her chair, across the room, and don't you fold this one back, _jerk_, this is what she was talking about while she lay dying on that couch- this is why she _stayed _when she could have run-

Her hands find his face and she pulls his cheek into her neck and he barely even fumbles getting his arms around her waist, this man who does not understand how to touch without breaking, and for a very long moment, they just stand.

Tyler, she thinks with her cheek on his head.

Why did you have to _go_.

You were so _safe_, she never had to _wonder_, it was you and her and Mystic Falls forever-

And then along came this man.

Not a good man, not even a terrible man, something _abysmal_, stunted, warped, more gargoyle than guy, a thing of stone centuries, marked by time but never truly touched, no mercy in his heart, no pity in his eyes.

And somehow he fell.

And somewhere along the way, when, how, she doesn't _know_, ok, he reached out, and he snagged her halfway through his plunge, and for months he has dragged her along behind him, kicking, screaming, denying.

She is eroded.

His smile, voice, the smooth motion of his wrist carrying his brush through another loop, a different whorl- all of these wear her away, break her down.

She stands holding his strange irregular heartbeat against her own, his hair soft underneath her, his arms strong around her, and she tries so _hard _to remember your poor mom, to feel her lungs struggling for air, her arms fighting for purchase, these stained artist's hands pressing her down, holding her fast-

And God the way you _sobbed _afterward- big tough dickbag Tyler Lockwood, little boy lost in her arms, and she swore, she _swore _she was never going to forgive him, that never again would that little flicker of something that started in her stomach and worked its way somehow into her chest ever rear its ugly head, no matter how many goddamned ponies he drew or dimples he flashed- she was right all along, what a monster, what a _freak_, how could she have ever _ever _hoped for something more, stupid smalltown Caroline with her head up her naive little ass-

And now here she stands, Tyler.

Here she frigging _stands _with this monster in her arms, with this freak's head against her neck, feeling his hair, murmuring her reassurances, trying so _hard _not to kiss his neck, to find her way along his chin to his lips.

It is not one-sided.

She kept that drawing for a reason.

What else can she _say _except sorry, God she is so, _so _sorry- Mom please forgive her, Tyler this doesn't reduce you-

This is just something that _happened_.

If he doesn't know, this can still be ok.

If he never understands, she can still wake up in the morning and stand before her mirror as Caroline the girl and not Caroline the monster, eternally unlined, marked not by time, stress, or sun, but still _Caroline _who wore her crown with pride, who loved her friends without fail, who was going to make her mother proud.

* * *

In the sixteenth century he brought two prominent families to war with nothing more than a suggestion here, a seduced wife there, no supernatural powers employed, no superior strength exploited.

He forced nearly a century of alliance to its knees as mere Niklaus the peasant, not Klaus the king.

He was bored; they were a challenge.

This is harder.

In the beginning though she demands free rein he follows just behind, waiting for her outside hotels, across from cafés, in the alleyways out back of clubs.

He never lets her out of his sight.

And then one day, she steps out his door and she slams it with a huff behind her, and he does not move from his desk.

He shuts his eyes.

He listens to her go, her eager heart, impatient heels, all the little physical reminders of what joy she takes in her duties, in venturing forth into the world alone to make her mark upon it.

He gets no work done, of course.

His maps and his documents he spreads before him, elbows upon his desk, pointer fingers in a triangle beneath his chin, and for the entire eternal day he stares blankly out the window, seeing nothing.

And in what way is he compensated for these unsettled thoughts, churning stomach, damp hands?

In bright smile, hands on his shoulders, lips on his cheek.

And like a bloody _boy _he lights up, looks shyly down at his hands, flicks his eyes back to her only when he is sure she is not watching.

In the eighteenth century, he bedded two of Paris' most famous courtesans.

Simultaneously.

No compulsion, no threats, merely this smile that takes him so far and these dimples which work on so many save her, and for three nights they plied him with their best, positions enviable of those contorted circus showmen with feet upon their head, techniques worthy of the gods, enthusiasm surpassed by none; how much of Paris loved them; how many hoped to lure them away to marriage; how often they trapped a man by first his body and then his soul, these simpering beauties with coy eyelashes and calculated looks.

When he was finished he bade them fight one another to the death, winner take all, loves, good luck to you both, and then from that miniscule victory pool he chose his meal, and he relished it on the rumpled sheets where he had them both.

And all she must do is smile, touch his arm, press her lips to his beard.

Pathetic, and yet somehow he doesn't mind it; his time is divided, half to the maneuvering of this city which will one day be his own, half to the acquisition of another of these touches, one more of these kisses.

She misses her mother; he urges her to call every day, to check in, ease her mind, banish these dark wonderings of the unsure; she marvels at the lights, the people, the commotion of this great city; he takes her to the top of One Shell Square to view it in its entirety.

She likes chocolate in all its forms, but most especially paired with mint, he discovers, and collects this sharp winter treat in its bed of smooth cocoa from each little gift shop he happens across, a dozen different varieties, from bitterest dark to sweetest milk.

By day he directs her routes, by night he organizes her findings.

She scoffs at the piles on his desk, and when one evening he nods off in his chair, he wakes with chin upon his chest to find this steadily increasing collection tucked away within the filing cabinet against the back wall, Caroline bent over its last drawer, folder in hand.

"Ok," she barks. "Here you have 'Places', divided into allies, enemies, neutral, and unknown. These are all color-coordinated. In the next drawer you have 'People', each person with their own separate file, with a corresponding 'ally', 'enemy', 'neutral' or 'unknown' color tab. This folder is for any incoming messages from all the little lackeys I assume you're going to accumulate at some point or another; this one is for carbon copies of any outgoing messages. Both of these folders are divided into several different subsections according to the content of the message- we'll add to them later. This folder is for any intercepted messages or records, also divided into subsections according to content. Everything goes _straight _back where it is, got it?" She jabs her finger at him, both eyebrows high. "Sophomore year I made Gary Whittley cry because he hung the snowflakes for Winter Formal on the wrong side of the gym, and don't think for one single _second _I won't do the same to you if you screw up my system."

"I wouldn't dream of it," he says, hiding his smile behind his palm.

"And are we actually going to get on developing some kind of code? Any messages we need to get across the city are not going to freaking encode themselves, you know."

"Caroline," he asks, propping his pointer fingers against his upper lip, "have I ever told you you're fantastic?"

She flutters her lashes. "Not in so many words."

* * *

Sophie rouses from her despair.

Upon her turning she killed three innocents, and so for the last two weeks she has accepted quite meekly the oak-polished boundaries of her prison, but now it seems she has recovered sufficiently to again renew her campaign.

Her calls bombard him once, twice, three times a day.

He ignores them all.

"You're not even a little bit curious what she has to say?"

"Let her stew, after her little stunt."

He does not bow to pawns.

* * *

He murders those four unfortunates with their homes in a neat circle round Sophie's prison.

The petite little brunette is first, such a tiny thing- frail bird wrists, swan throat, human heart, fumbling about in her bag for her keys, his footsteps unnoticed, her peril overlooked.

"Hello, Ashley," he says warmly.

She drops her keys.

Her eyes tell him she knows him well, this nightmare of closet monsters, and yet still her instincts prevail, she tries to run, mouth open, tongue dry, scream withered, and he catches her round the waist, holds her close against him, presses his lips tight to her ear. "Shh, shh, shh, love. Shh. Shh. There now. Are we all right?"

Her skin twitches in a winter shuddering; her tears burn the hand he holds in a steel band down across her mouth. "I just want you to give Marcel a message for me, sweetheart; there's nothing to be afraid of."

"You're not going to kill me?" she whispers through his fingers.

"Of course I am, love. How else will Marcel get the point?" he asks, and with blinding reptile strike he rips open her carotid.

* * *

Danny Graber puts up a fight.

He is new to his supernatural superiority, full of hubris, that failure of man and monster alike, a thing of hot testosterone, hotter temper, a man consumed, a strutting cock.

Go on and ruffle your feathers, little peacock: he enjoys a good show.

He receives the boy's stake through his heart with smile upon his face, and Danny- little Danny, self-assured Danny with the pub still in a nicotine perfume about your shirt and your hair- little Danny, why do you run- little Danny come out come out wherever you are-

Little Danny, he'll huff and he'll puff-

Little Danny, you can run but you can't hide-

Little Danny-

Peekaboo.

* * *

Thomas McConnell recognizes him at once.

Thomas McConnell does not bother to run.

Bryce Decker insists he knows nothing, he is a nobody, he parks the _cars_, please, man, he is only _twenty_, he has a _family_-

Bryce Decker dies like a coward, screaming for his mother.

He has them packaged at the local butcher's shop and delivers them to Marcel in pieces.

Courtesy of Sophie, says the tag on their wrapping.

* * *

"Marcel's second-in-command is a 300-year-old vampire named Jacob Marks. He's going to be at the House of Blues tomorrow night for some kind of meeting. I've got three wolves willing to take him on, but they're going to need some back-up for a vamp that strong," his voicemail tells him.

Poor little Sophie.

Thinks she's grabbed the wolf by its jaws when she has instead snagged it round the tail.

* * *

Strapping young things, these three wolves, with their football shoulders in mountains beneath their coats.

He inhales the coffee and tea shop across the street, the warm mocha, the hot cinnamon, bright orange, smooth vanilla, all of these flavors in a thin layer over their nervous sweat, and he steps into the alley where they wait and smiles charmingly.

"Hello. My name is Klaus. Sophie suggested I pop round to offer you some assistance."

Brighter than they look: each of them eyes him warily.

He points to the blonde lad furthest to the right. "You, pop on in and warn Jacob Marks that Sophie's sent assassins round the back. The two of you, turn on one another. Make sure you kill each other," he orders, and commences the festivities with one sharp click of his fingers.

Just fantastic, the way they leap to do his bidding.

* * *

"Why did you do that?" she demands when he fills her in on his night's work.

"Caroline, love, this is war: everyone save yourself is an enemy combatant. You sow seeds of doubt between the witches and wolves, former allies, the threads of which alliance has already been strained by their own back-biting, and you turn their attention from yourself to things more immediately concerning, namely who among their numbers is a traitor. The wolves are already wary of Sophie; with this new betrayal Sophie now has reason to be wary of them as well. If she's as clever as I suspect, she'll play it close to her vest- she'll want to weed them out by pretending nothing is wrong, that those who have not openly turned against her still have her trust; she'll need to turn her attention away from my particular Achilles heel to this weak spot of her own. The wolves will also doubt their own, perhaps even turn on one another. Marcel will of course sense this dissention, see his chance, and come swooping in to finish them all off."

"Leaving you forgotten in the corner."

"Not forgotten. Relegated to the back burner, is that the expression?" He watches her put her feet up on the arm of the couch, her pretty little lips in a line, her brow furrowed, her arms crossed. "I can appear neither too weak nor too strong to Marcel; too weak and he'll try to pick you off; too strong and he will do the same. You are a point for him to exploit; I am only nearly infallible. Marcel knows that."

"Why would Marcel try and kill me at all? I'm his leverage over you."

"Marcel is not stupid, but he is arrogant."

"I wonder where he picked that up," she cuts in before he can continue, and he smiles, seats himself on the opposite end of the couch, picks her feet up off the arm and sets them down in his lap. She opens her mouth to protest as he slips off first one sock and then the other, and then with a huff she sinks back against the cushions, those pretty little lips in a soft 'o', the brow streamlined, the eyes half-closed. "Ok, so Marcel is arrogant, which I'm absolutely certain he didn't learn from a former teacher of his. What does that have to do with killing me instead of tying me up in his freaky dungeon and telling you that you can have me back when you can be a good little original hybrid?"

He works his thumb into the sole of her foot. "To take away what's most precious to the other side is the goal of all warfare. Kill its men, rape its women, starve its children- what can't the enemy accomplish, if it can do all of this? It's a spiritual battle as much as it is a physical thing. Kill the enemy's morale, and their military force is inconsequential."

"So Marcel thinks that if I die, that would just drive you right out of New Orleans? That you'd be so broken you wouldn't retaliate by just burning the whole city to the ground?"

He concentrates on her foot, runs his fingers from heel to inseam to arch, swallows the knot in his throat, presses down against the burning in his chest.

For a thousand years, he has suppressed.

Do not feel this, stop yearning over that.

Kill him, he has become too important to you, dagger her, she made you weak when all you wanted was to be strong.

But you cannot hold down forever, can you, love?

He has occasionally loved too much to allow life, but to deny death for this same emotion, to go beyond, to be unable-

He was going to let her die like all the others who inserted themselves somehow into his heart. He was going to watch her gasp her final breaths, make her peace, savor her moments, and how _relieved _he was going to be- she grew upon him, certainly, as people have done from time to time, but not so much that he couldn't let go, that he couldn't use her up, toss her aside, toe her out of line to make room for the next-

But of course he didn't.

Naturally he could not.

Love, you will never understand.

Sweetheart, you cannot comprehend.

Tyler Lockwood loved you with his simple boy's heart, with all eighteen years of his trifling little life, but he has laid down ten centuries of hate and indifference and domination for your smile.

"For Marcel, killing you would be the ultimate show of his power, a demonstration of just exactly what it is he can take away from me."

"Ok, but you wouldn't just _leave_, would you?"

"I would gut him, his entire family, this whole city. I would burn New Orleans to the ground, and then I would move onto the next city, and I would do the same. For the next thousand years, I'd kill everything in my path." He pauses, flicks his eyes up to find her own. "Because I would want the entire world to hurt as badly as I did."

* * *

She has read of wildfire love, scorching tongues, volcano loins, Fabio-the-stallion-sniffed-my-hair-and-boing-there -went-his-horse-sized-erection- all of that Harlequin crap.

And she used to think that was how it went, you ventured out into the world and somewhere on your way you picked up your Prince Charming, and he was transfixed by your hair, your eyes, your laugh, all of you was perfect, here milady, might he offer you a hand up onto his white steed, let us ride away quick.

Off into the sunset you went.

Mom didn't have enough time for you and Daddy was never home, but this Prince Charming- he wanted all of you, your flaws, your foibles, every fragmented little piece.

He liked you anyway.

And good God, the _orgasms_, whatever those were.

But then she grew up.

She moved beyond her world of flashlights beneath sheets, of giggling forays into Webster's dictionary in quest of the word 'tumescent', of white horses, handsome princes, happily ever afters.

Love was something that faded.

Men were deserters, women brooders.

When the flames burn out there are only hard eyes, cynical lips, new vocabulary: divorce lawyer, alimony, child support.

No one is going to love you forever.

And you -God you most of all- you'll be lucky to get a year, you with your parties, your pageants, your incessant Hitler orders.

Tyler promised forever, Klaus offers eternity, but it doesn't _work _like that- you can't just _pledge _yourself that way- it dies, it _always _dies, _get _it- one day she is alluring, the next annoying; her laugh grates, her smile infuriates.

You can't just sit there with your stupid British accent and your goddamn dimples and tell her with straight face and serious eyes that it is never going to be anyone else.

For the next thousand years, you won't want another- give her a freaking _break_, tell her another, what a frigging _joke_-

But sometimes…sometimes she has such _hope_, watching him smile at her.

* * *

She knows she is in trouble when she has to keep reminding herself of every horrible thing he's ever done, a little tally she ticks off each morning when she first gets up.

They fall into this comfortable little routine, he with coffee ready before she is even awake (because superwoman vamp enhancements or no she is barely even functional until her second cup), she with a flurry of reminders for him before he is out the door to check on Sophie: more blood bags, they're out of tea again, and could he please _please_ pick up some more of those little orange cream hard candies from the shop on the corner?

At ten she starts her rounds; Klaus has bribed, dimpled, cajoled his way into the hearts of those few not on Marcel's payroll, and for the first couple hours of her day she circles around to them all, talking to hotel managers, shop owners, café proprietors, notes exchanged, information gleaned, gossip swapped.

At night they sit together at his desk, going over what she has learned, brows furrowed, fingers sweeping, Klaus with his warm, warm shoulder pressed against her own, his hair mussed, his boots up.

They thumbtack all the areas on the map over which he is beginning to exercise some control.

She falls asleep on his shoulder, he dozes off with his lips pressed to her hair.

She wakes up in his lap, his arms loosely around her, his mouth warm against her, and she pretends it is ok and she goes back to sleep.

* * *

They circle one another.

If he does not press too hard she does not step back terribly far; if he treads lightly she does not catch the scent of the predator; if he measures his advance in half inches she lets him come.

A finger down her arm one day, a kiss to her shoulder the next.

The snaring of a stubborn woman is a hunt: there is the laying of the bait, the long wait, the careful creeping.

The flourish of the weapons, no polished saber or thundering musket of the battlefield but calculated smile, clever hands, cunning words.

But she is of course no ordinary woman, and she knows what he's doing.

It becomes a game.

If he can dimple his cheeks so too can she flutter her lashes. If he leaves his hand pressed for too long against the curve of her waist as she slides off his desk, she stands between his knees for a moment more than is necessary.

She slides her hand high up his thigh as she leans forward to peer down at the map spread before them; he positions himself directly behind her while she makes tea in the kitchen, lips skating her ear, nose grazing her neck.

When one night they have finished their strategizing and she stands with arch in her back, hands over her head to bid him good evening, he kneels, and he presses his mouth to the soft skin just above her navel.

She jerks his head back by the hair at the nape of his neck, leans down, takes his ear between her teeth, bites down hard enough to wound, flicks her skilled little tongue out to lick up the blood.

Down his neck she works, tasting as she goes, and he can only dangle here in her grip, breaths rattling in his throat, hands balled in her shirt, all of him alert, in need, what a thing it is to have the tables turned on him-

"Good night, Klaus," she murmurs in his ear, and vanishes.

The next morning, he corners her in the living room.

She tenses when his arms come around her from behind.

He tests the curve of her throat with his teeth, just a pinprick, a deft hint of fang, a skillful touch of tongue and then he digs in, crushes her back against him, feels her whole body bow instinctively, her hands vising around his forearm.

He pulls away for a moment. "Relax, sweetheart. I won't hurt you," he whispers, and by increments she does, sinking into him, fingers gradually loosening, chest heaving, little helpless noises rising in the back of her throat as he gouges his teeth deeper, crushes her closer, and now unconsciously or otherwise she begins to grind herself back on him and with a shaky little breath he unhooks his fangs from her throat, holds his wrist to her lips, stands with head tilted back, eyes flickering as she rips into him-

He lowers his face to her neck again.

She cries out.

He slides his hands from waist to stomach to breasts and she curves her own hands over them, slips them underneath shirt, past bra, lets go of his wrist to latch onto his ear, sucks and tongues and bites it until his sanity is gone, his control lost- back against the wall he slams her, lips on her throat-

Her shirt is gone in a moment, her bra torn away in a blink.

She hurls him onto the couch.

She tries to pin him, to keep him trapped with her warm thighs and her crushing hands, but he is the alpha male, love, and he does not submit.

But if he does not yield neither does she and through furniture they crash, off walls they rebound, she pushing, he pulling, both of them bruised, bleeding, predatory, mouths insatiable, hands desperate, she wrestling for his shirt, he working the button on her jeans one-handed as he holds her pinned to the wall with the other, his lips attacking her throat, chin, mouth, his tongue dipping in, his hips pressing forward, Caroline straining forward to meet him, belly warm, breasts warmer, why in the bloody hell is there still this _layer_ between them-

He helps her untangle his arms from his shirt and she tongues his nipple into her mouth, digs her fingers into his hips so hard he feels them through his jeans, sits him down hard on the couch.

She kicks away her jeans and straddles him in just her thin black lingerie, grinds herself down so roughly that for just a moment he does not care that their roles have reversed once more, she on top, he helpless underneath her, his breathing frenzied, his heart set to flight, their lips punishing, their hands even more cruel.

* * *

Do not have sex with this man do not have sex with this man- oh God, oh _God_-

She grips his head in both hands as he kisses his way from one breast to the other and then her traitorous freaking hands reach down to undo his belt, frantically fumble open his zipper, and now someone pushes aside her panties, her or him, she's not sure, and then he is inside her.

The first orgasm is quick for both of them.

A few brutal thrusts and she cries out, he buries his face in her hair, arms locked around her back, both of them shuddering, everything tinged black, her curls sticky, her breasts crushed, his lashes half-mast.

He opens his eyes and it is like he's trying to memorize every little detail of this moment, the sweat on her nose, the exertion in her cheeks, the raw lips, trembling hands, all of this taken inside, stored away, locked up tight.

He kisses her for so long, just stroking her cheeks with his thumbs.

The second time is slower.

In his bedroom he peels off his jeans and her Victoria's Secret boy shorts, lays her back down against the pillows, kisses her chin, her nose, her forehead, strokes the hair back out of her eyes, pushes his way inch by inch inside, one slow half-thrust at a time.

He has wanted this for so _long_.

There are all these little pauses in his rhythm, these brief interims in which he just lies here looking at her, brushing the hair back from her forehead, kissing her lips cautiously, his breathing shaky, his hands shakier, and she is just so _full_ watching him do this.

It is ok for her to enjoy this. It is _ok _for her to not feel guilty, to not be ashamed, because right now he is not a thousand-year-old murderer, he is just a man, and he is in _love_, and this is so much _progress_- look at how far he's _come_-

She kisses the tip of his sweaty nose, draws her hand down over the curls at the nape of his neck, and he is suddenly frantic, his lips at her chin, her neck, her forehead, hands careful, hips still motionless-

She locks her legs around his waist, urges him on with her heels, digs her nails into his shoulders.

He presses his forehead to hers, kisses her once, twice, again, slides her hands from his shoulders to press them down into the mattress underneath, lacing their fingers, his hips moving again with that frustrating languor, his breathing labored, his chest slippery, his necklaces jingling.

"Klaus," she pants as the tension begins to build, everything tightening, her toes curling, hips surging, their fingers constricting.

He breathes her name into her hair.

He kisses the side of her face, the hollow of her throat, the curve of her shoulder.

She muffles her cries against the tattoo on his left shoulder as the tension spikes, swells, spills her gasping over the edge; she bucks against him, rides it out, arches her back as another wave coils all her muscles, contracts them sharply, releases them slowly; his kisses become rougher, his thrusts more frenzied, and then with a sharp exhale he bites down on her bottom lip, and he empties himself with a hot spurt inside her.

He lays his cheek down against her chest with a shuddering breath.

She strokes his hair.

He flexes the hand he still has laced through one of her own.

She lays for a very long time underneath him, just feeling his curls, the muscles of his shoulders, the ridges of his spine, his lips warm against the top of her breast, his lashes soft against her skin.

When he pulls away at last he kisses her mouth twice, the first brief, the second lingering, and then he pushes himself up off the bed and he stands smiling down at her.

He pulls his jeans back on, tosses her one of his shirts, and when he lays back down against the pillows and almost shyly extends his arm out to one side, an invitation, she even more shyly lays her head down across it.

* * *

She falls asleep quickly.

He lingers awake for a very long time.

* * *

It meant more to him than it did to her, of course he knows this, but still there is a tightness in his throat the next morning when he wakes up alone.

* * *

**A/N: I tried to be very careful with the rating here, because this site likes to delete stories that venture into the realm of NC-17 where sex scenes are concerned. I think there's enough detail to warrant the 'M' rating but not to give the monitors heart palpitations. Hopefully. I would have liked to write something a bit more graphic, but as I said, I would really like to avoid any unnecessary deletions. With that being said, for my thousandth tumblr post I do intend to write some Klaroline porn, and since I'm not bound by any rating limitations, I can make it as detailed as my filthy, filthy mind will allow, so if you're interested in that, keep an eye on my tumblr account. I can be found under the same name on there. I'm about twenty posts away from 1,000, and with the way I ramble on and reblog, I'll be there in no time.**

**Oh, and what did Elijah do to earn Klaus' wrath? I'll never tell. (Well, I will eventually, but not for a while. I'll give you a hint, though: it has something to do with a significant event in Russian history that took place in the summer of 1918.)**

**I really do hope you enjoyed this, but if you are less than enthusiastic about it, I always welcome those opinions as well. Never hesitate to contact me, either here or on tumblr, if you have something to say. Stay tuned for part two, coming soon to a computer screen near you.**


	2. Part Two

**A/N: All right, on we head into the next and final part of this. I won't blather on too much except to apologize for the length of this because _holy Jesus I didn't mean for this to happen._ If you follow me on tumblr you know that I take no responsibility for having written so much, and that I was goaded on by certain tumblr users who insist that 10,000 words is practically a drabble and that really, nothing under 20,000 is acceptable. _You know who you are_.**

**I suggest you go back and take a quick peek at the notes written out in the first part of this, because some of them will pop up again in the historical section. I am not going to add too many more, because I've made you wait long enough for this without forcing you to wade through a gigantic author's note and much of the terminology is familiar if you've read the first part, but I do have a few to add. I also want to note that none of the other flashbacks will be so long; I wanted to really go into Klaus' intelligence background because his operation in New Orleans is going to be largely based off his experiences in Ireland, and also I've read a lot on this time period and I've developed rather an obsession with it and I got a bit carried away. So. Apologies for letting the history nerd in me run rampant. On we go:**

**Peeler: Term for a police officer. (I do think context eventually renders this fairly obvious, but the first time it pops up I'm not sure it's clear enough, so I'll throw it in.)**

**Tender: A tender describes a few different vehicles from what I've read, so for the purposes of this story it is essentially an armored truck. (This won't come up until the very end of the fic.)**

**De Valera: Eamon de Valera, a prominent 20th century Irish politician. In 1921 he had his office position upgraded from prime minister to president of the Republic declared by the rebels fighting at the time. (Though Ireland did not yet technically have a separate government recognized by the British.)**

**G Division: The DMP (Dublin Metropolitan Police) was divided into several different divisions identified by letters. G Division was the section assigned to handle terrorist activity. The officers assigned to it were known as 'G men' and were in charge of investigating and tracking down Michael Collins' intelligence operators. **

**Hurling: Hurling is a game of ancient Gaelic origin which uses a hurley (a wooden stick that looks a lot like a field hockey stick) to hit a small ball known as a sliotar toward the goal of the opposing team. It looks a bit like field hockey, though the rules are different.**

**Michael Collins' 'Squad' was also known as the 'Twelve Apostles'. (I make reference to him addressing his 'apostles' at one point but it isn't clear that the two are one and the same, which is why I'm noting this really quickly.)**

**The 'Castle' was actually mentioned back in the third one-shot when I covered the Easter Rising, but since it's been a while I'll mention it again. This refers to Dublin Castle, which was the epicenter of the British occupation.**

**The 'Kitty' Collins references toward the end of this fic is Kitty Kiernan, who he became engaged to after the negotiations for the Anglo-Irish Treaty concluded. I haven't really included her because she does not play a large role in history and she isn't really part of this story, and also because Collins was involved in a bit of a love triangle with Harry Boland over her, and I don't know about you guys, but I am DONE with love triangles.**

**I think that's it for all the major terminology. On we go then, hmm? Enjoy. Hopefully. **

* * *

**New Orleans, 2013**

He smells her before she reaches the front door.

She has always favored citrus.

"Hello, Nik," she says loftily, chin high, smile cold.

* * *

There is this sound the skin makes, when it burns.

It is not the crackling of the pan or the sizzling of the grill but something else entirely, a whole new noise, another level, and the _smell_-

She screams.

All around her are similar cries, the crashing of china, the shattering of wine glasses, snapped necks, skewered hearts, but pain is a selfish thing.

You are wrapped in it, cocooned, folded away until there is nothing else, you are the pain, the pain is you, try feeling anything more, you are being _consumed_, what the hell else _matters_-

The fine blonde hairs on her arms smoke and her cheeks blister and inside her mouth her tongue coils and shrinks and flakes away-

She rolls off her chair.

She lands on the carpet and with stifled sobs she drags herself on burned-away fingers beneath the table, the tablecloth burlap, the carpet sandpaper, all of her chafed, raw, but keep moving because they're _coming_- two tables down, Forbes, _move_-

Oh God oh God oh God God _God_-

She huddles beneath the table picking shrapnel from her veins, vervain in her blood, vomit in her mouth, and she listens to their boots.

Bombs in their hands, smiles on their faces, they walked right on in here like they were freaking something and they threw without care, humans, vamps, who cares, get 'em all, boys, this is war-

But there was a _kid_.

She understands about war, ok, the way it wrings you out and it bleeds you dry, how you are molded anew, your old skin shed, your uniform in its place, here is your number and your rifle, boy, get to it.

You separate.

Away into a box goes the old you.

So you walk into a restaurant, and you throw your bombs.

You roll the body of this kid who was your collateral damage out of the way, and you step over his mother to stake the vamp beside her, and in this way you move on, seamlessly, automatically.

It's not personal.

These vamps were on the other side and those humans- wrong place, wrong time, should have picked your destinations more carefully, didn't anyone warn you about New Orleans crime rates-

You keep going.

Maybe there's a little kernel of something, way down deep in your gut, flickering intermittently.

Maybe tomorrow you will think about that kid and you will remember his mother and the way she reached for your ankle and she clung to you with a scream, but today-

Today you shake her off.

Today you have a cause to fight for and a family to go home to.

But so does she.

You always forget that about the other side.

See, she came to this revelation.

Last night she slept with Klaus Mikaelson and this morning she spent three whole hours coming to terms with the fact that it wasn't just sex, and here is something you don't know about her.

When she cares about someone, she puts everything she is into it.

So she shuts her eyes, and she digs down past her fear, and what she comes up holding is the girl whose father strapped her in a chair and tried to burn the monster out of her, whose pretty dark-haired boyfriend trapped her between body and bed and took his pleasure as he liked, whose friend promised always and threw her aside for a boy.

She sees your boot through the table cloth.

She smells your lupine sweat and your coffee breath.

And your heart-

She can already taste it.

You lift the cloth, and you reach down underneath it, and what you expect to come out holding is the girl who crawled shivering beneath this flimsy little circle of white-draped wood, who scrambled on hands and knees to her cover, sobbing as she went, skin hissing, curls blistering.

But here's the thing, see.

This girl just needed a moment to re-group, to catch her breath, to find her center.

Damon hurt her so much and Daddy wounded her even more, and do you have any idea how something like this chews away at a person who loves too much, who just wanted their pretty new boyfriend to look only at them, who just wanted their _dad_, _daddy_, who used to stroke her hair and tickle her feet-

Have you ever been pinned down and used until you cry, shh, it's all right, sweetie, I'll kill you when it's over-

Once she had no power.

Today she has no weakness.

Maybe you burned it out.

Maybe she shut her eyes and she saw all these things in a cinema flickering behind her lids, Daddy's eyes, Damon's hands, the cages, the chains, gagged mouth, skewered palms, and maybe she is just. _Done_.

So here's the deal.

Stick your hand just a little bit farther beneath this table where she no longer cringes.

Go on.

Peekaboo.

* * *

"What are you doing here, Bekah?"

"Put this in the bedroom down the hall, would you? Third door on the left," she tells the muscular young brunette who stands beside her with suitcases in hand, his inhuman heart beating so frantically in his chest.

"Who the hell is this?" he snaps as the boy edges cautiously past him.

"This is James; I picked him up along the way." She slips off her sunglasses and with his five extra inches he is still somehow looked down upon, and go on, Bekah, keep _scrutinizing _him, sister, if you fancy your eyes in a jumble at your feet-

"Where's Caroline?" she asks casually.

"How did you-"

"Oh, don't give me that look- I can smell her all over you." She wrinkles her nose distastefully. "Is that why you're here alone? Because the aftermath went so smashingly? Let me guess- as soon as it was over, she turned tail and ran. Her little vamp hormones were out of control, you were there. How convenient of you, Nik."

He tightens his hand on the door.

She brushes past him.

"I asked you what you are _doing_ here, _Bekah_."

"It's my home, too. I don't need a reason."

He slams the door.

She looks round with a little scoff and tosses her glasses carelessly onto the couch. "Well, this is quite cozy. But I don't like her perfume; get rid of it."

He smiles without humor. "She was here first. If you don't like it, you're more than welcome to leave. In fact I'd be happy to escort you to the door myself."

"_I _was here first, Nik."

They stare one another down.

"How's the football player? Not still hung up on Elena, is he?" he asks pleasantly. "I was really rooting for the two of you, you know. Of course, without that cure, I expect Matt may be a little less receptive to your charms. Bit touchy on the whole vampire subject, is Mystic Fall's dashing young bartender."

"Don't talk to me about hopeless romances, Nik. You think you've been down here building some kind of life with her? Caroline will _never _love you. It's never you, Nik. Not for people like her."

He is absolutely silent.

"A girl doesn't just run out the door if she's interested in more, Nik. Do you honestly think she would give even a moment's consideration to someone like you after everything you've done? That she might actually _care_ for someone who will never deserve it? Caroline may not be my favorite person, but she has a little better taste than that. She's disgusted by you, Nik. So don't you sit here, _brother_, and pass judgment on me over hopeless little infatuations with people who are never going to care."

He hears the boy on the stairs, and he turns casually.

He reaches the banister in a blink.

It comes away so easily in his hand.

"Nik, _don't_-" she screams, but poor little James- didn't quite catch her cry, just couldn't make it out of the way-

He stabs the boy through the heart, holds him in place as he gurgles and sags and dies.

"I hope you truly cared for him, Bekah. Since he gave you a moment's worth of his attention, I'd say it's safe to say you did."

He smiles with only his lips.

* * *

He is at work before his canvas when his phone rings, and pathetically he snatches it from the easel, and even more pathetically he swallows and looks away when he sees not Caroline's name but Sophie's.

"I'm rather not in the mood for another assassination plot, love. Perhaps I could interest you in-"

"Klaus, shut up."

Now he knows she didn't just say that to him, this little inconsequential worm who cannot maintain a spell forever, who cannot preserve their link throughout eternity- the _audacity _of these little peasants with their frail safety nets upon which they lean so heavily-

"I'll give you a second chance to rephrase that," he hisses. "Perhaps, 'Klaus, I'm about to reverse the spell, allow me a moment to grovel at your feet so that my death might be swift and merciful.'"

"Klaus, something is happening to Caroline," she whispers. "And Marcel's men are here. Now."

There is a sudden roaring, in moments like these.

Over his head it crashes, into his chest it seeps, his heartbeat lost among its pounding, his breaths smothered beneath its thunder, his hand poised, his eyes unblinking.

"Klaus?"

He hangs up.

He is down the stairs in a moment.

He seizes Bekah by the shoulders as she rises from his couch with her lofty eyebrows and her thin mouth and now she twists out from underneath his grip, puts out her hands to shove him away, and he grabs her again, pins her beneath his fingers, holds her until it hurts.

"Nik, what the _hell_-"

"Go find Caroline," he orders. "Bring her straight back here-"

"_Funny_, Nik. What makes you think I give a single damn about you or your little trollop-"

"You _find her _and you bring her home safely, or ninety years rotting in a coffin will be _nothing _compared to what I do to you next, do you understand me?"

* * *

She drags her first victim underneath the table with her.

He is warm, and sticky, and inside his veins she tastes metal adrenaline, old whiskey, new fear, and with her teeth to his neck, her hand in his chest, she drains him dry, and she tosses him aside.

And maybe she's picked up a thing or two about grand entrances from the world's original drama queen, because when she ducks out from underneath this table, it is not on her hands and knees, but in a graceful crouch, face smeared, hands steady, and now as her head clears the edge she comes uncoiled from this crouch, and for just a moment she stands licking her fingers, and she smiles.

She's learned a thing or two about smiles from him too.

So cringe back just a little more, boys.

Hold your stakes warily out in front of you, take your uncertain breaths, your shuffling steps, tell yourselves it's just a _girl_, all we need is a moment, hold her down and gimme a taste-

At her back the curtains smoke and the carpet crackles and somewhere beyond these flames are little shifting shadows of the mortally wounded, the vampires with their hearts nearly pierced and the humans with their throats mostly crushed, and it's not that she doesn't care, it's not that she doesn't smell their skin and hear their screams and taste their brittle straw hair on the back of her tongue, but here's the thing about being a monster.

Sometimes the kill is more important than heroics.

She has not let go like this in _so long_, and you over there with your wispy raven-wing hair and your too-blue eyes- you look at her the same way he once broke her into little pieces with just his eyes, Caroline Forbes you are just a _thing_ said his gaze, and if she could have just pushed back, if she could have only made him understand how much it _hurt_-

But life is all about substitutions.

Sometimes you just have to _settle_, you know?

She rips the stake from the hands of this wispy raven-haired stand-in and she flips it around to drive it through his heart, and then she lifts him by the collar of his shirt, and she throws him so casually through the window.

His friends lunge.

Two, three, four, five- they pop up from nowhere, they pour in through this gap their friend has just opened between street and shop, but she no longer stands where they strike, her feet hit the bar, her hands close around a neck, onto the next she moves, all of them spinning about, crashing together, lashing out-

She digs into a jugular and it is all right that she likes it, it is ok that she worries away like a dog, punches down through skin, snaps ligament, grazes bone, loses herself in this mauling, her fingers in his hair, her hands guiding his head, tipping it this way, tilting it that way.

Make a victim of her _now_, boys.

Go on- hold her down, make her _cry_, listen to her _scream_-

She lifts her head and all around her are emptied bladders, panicked sweat, machine gun breaths, God how _amazing _they are, these signs of the prey-

She breaks them down, tears and takes and roots around, throws them through glass, over wood, and now to the door they try to make it, and in its entryway they are pushed back, turned around, flung screaming backward to land writhing in their own flames-

* * *

At an hour like this the humans still teem, and so at a dead sprint he takes the sidewalk from manor to Ritz, shouldering them out of his way, ignoring their cries, their pitiful little warning shoves, his breaths short, his heartbeats shorter-

Into an alleyway he dives and at supernatural speed he takes this unpopulated shortcut, the world in a blur all about him, his feet disturbing the rubbish bins and the crows in a scattered ring all around them, his throat blocked, his heart stopped-

If such a creature as God exists- if he is never to be granted anything again- if he is allowed one bloody wish in his entire eternal life, bloody _please_-

Sophie's room is a shambles.

Overturned dresser, shattered window, slain guards.

He brings his fist to his mouth, shuts his eyes, stands for a moment just breathing, scenting out each distinct smell, the men's cologne, the women's perfume, Sophie's strawberry shampoo in a mist all about him-

He stumbles out into the hallway.

She has dragged herself down the corridor, left her blood and her cosmetics and her sweat in a streak over the carpet, and on dead wooden feet he lurches forward to find her.

This morning he woke up alone and though a thousand years has taught him better, he rolled over to feel along this cold spot among his sheets, and he hurt.

What did she _mean_, leaving him behind after he poured so much of himself into really bloody _experiencing _something- he wasn't just tangling limbs here, sweetheart, he was trying to _tell _her something with his lips and his hands and his sighs choked short in her hair.

Bekah accused him once of an inability to love, but though he has tried, he has pushed down, shoved deep, kept back, he has only ever been _afraid_, not incapable, hasn't anyone _seen _that- don't they understand about the boy who loved so much and never got enough in return-

Mikael kept him forever outside, a guest among his own.

In his new skin the world too held him at bay, and though he may lurk along its edges he will never belong to its center.

He will never be accepted into the fold.

But she too is a periphery creature, this girl who loves with everything, who has never been cherished enough, who has shown him so many things, and didn't she feel a bloody _thing_, wasn't she too, for even a _moment_, taken beyond the slap of flesh and the slip of sweat- when she laid her head down over his arm and she fell asleep against his side- wasn't she _safe_, wasn't she _sated_, not just a satisfaction of the hormones but a fulfillment of the heart-

Didn't he give her enough of himself- wasn't he for just a moment something _more_?

This morning he woke up alone and though a thousand years has taught him better, he rolled over to feel along this cold spot among his sheets, and he hurt.

And shouldn't she bloody well be wounded as well, he wondered, shouldn't she knows what it's _like_, to swallow against this dagger bristling in your throat, shouldn't something befall her, shouldn't she be made to _see_-

But he never meant this.

He just wanted her to come _home _to him, to kneel on his bed with disappointment in her eyes and shame in her voice, to tell him she has questioned, she has agonized, she has _decided_.

Tyler Lockwood was her first love but he is not her last.

And now he tracks the witch by her blood.

Now he walks with fists clenched tight and heart clenched tighter and he doesn't want to _know_, he can't stand to see.

Something darts round the corner and he takes this straggler by the throat, pins them up against the wall, drops his fangs in a flash.

His fingers spring open.

"It's about _time _you got here, for God's sake," she snaps. "Look, I don't know how many there are, but some of your little bodyguards lured several of them away, so let's get the hell out of here before they come back. I think Marcel's witch might be with them."

"Are you all right?" he demands roughly.

"I'd thank you for your concern, if, you know, any of it was for me." She plucks her shirt away from her bloodied stomach and holds it out for his inspection. "One of them nicked me. Nothing serious. It's Caroline I'm worried about. Something's going down, Klaus. I told you some of the packs were pissed; they don't trust me, especially not as I am now, and I think they've been planning something for a little while now. There was an explosion a few minutes ago over at Ember's; my sister was outside. She got the hell out of there before she saw much of what was going on, but she's pretty sure a couple of guys who walked in there right before the bombs went off were members of one of the packs."

"And why didn't you tell me any of this?" he hisses.

"Tell you _what_? That some disgruntled werewolves are probably carrying out vampire hunting schemes behind my back, the where, when, and how of which I have no goddamned clue?"

"_Fine_," he hisses. "Then tell me why this is significant, before I rip out your spleen."

She steps up right into his face. "Go ahead. I wonder how fond of you your little girlfriend's going to stay when she starts missing her internal organs? Go ahead, _Klaus_. Break something. A rib, maybe? My spine? Do it. How much can she like you anyway?"

He stares her down from only an inch away, his hands itching for her heart, his teeth burning for her throat.

"You won't be linked forever," he says with a little smile. "And then what will you do, sweetheart? Forever is a very long time to not die."

She does not step away. "Right before my sister called to tell me about the bombing, my face suddenly felt like it was on fire."

He blinks.

"Like it had been ripped to shreds. My hand too, and all down my side. It's fading now, but it means there's a good chance she was caught in that blast. Obviously she's not dead yet, seeing as how I'm still standing here before you- or, wait, isn't she?"

He slams her back against the wall. "What do you _mean?_"

She smiles. "Careful. That hurts."

He loosens his grip instantly.

"Maybe I already unlinked us. Maybe I didn't want to be tied to her with Marcel's panties all in a bunch over her. Maybe I felt her slipping away a few minutes ago, and, in a panic, I severed the connection. Maybe I felt her dying and I didn't want to be taken down with her. But, hey, it's not like you can test that theory, is it? I mean, you could go ahead and kill me, but what if I'm lying?"

"I'm going to _savor _ripping out your tongue," he spits right into her ear.

"How does it feel, Klaus? To be manipulated? To not know for sure if someone you love is ok, if they're even _alive_- how does it feel to be goddamned _played _with, like a little toy?"

She slips out from between his numb arms. "Maybe she's lying down there in that rubble right now, and she's not quite dead, but hovering on the brink, trapped in that in-between moment when you take your last few breaths, when the blood is bubbling in your lungs, when every little inhale hurts, wondering why you didn't come, why you weren't _fast _enough-"

"_Shut your mouth_."

"Maybe you wasted your time rushing all the way over here, and you let her die."

He slams his foot through the wall, peels away a crumpled slab of plaster, hurls it across the hall. "One more _word_, sweetheart-"

"And you'll _what_? I saw how you feel about that girl. Everything I've ever heard about you suggests it's not even possible, but you love her. You love her so much it hurts, and it terrifies you, because you're invincible, you are the most powerful creature on this entire planet, and you can't even kill one bitchy little witch because of what it might do to this girl who might not even be alive anymore, but you love her so much it doesn't matter, you won't hurt me when there is even the slimmest, barest _sliver _of a hope that she is ok."

He swallows very thickly. "Give yourself a pat on the back, if you've finished preening your feathers."

She smiles humorlessly. "This girl doesn't even love you back, does she?"

"I think that's probably her business and none of yours," he snaps, and how he wishes he could close his hands around this woman's neck and squeeze, and squeeze, bulge her eyes, bleach her lips, what a _thrill_, to feel her nails in his wrists, her feet against his shins, her heartbeats all in a panic-

But there is a step.

Just round the corner, a soft whisper of the toes, a slow shush of the heel-

He spins her round behind him, takes this bullet meant for her to the spine, skin flinching, knees buckling, and in a blur he spins again, snatches one-handed the stake flung whistling toward her heart-

"_Klaus_-"

Yes, sweetheart, he _hears _the footsteps circling round to the other side, boxing them in, cutting them off, perhaps if you hadn't stopped to poke at him they'd already be on their bloody _way_-

He can of course skin them all in a blink.

But to attack is to leave the girl unguarded, to give them an opening, to offer up the split second upon which an entire life can hinge.

She tries to shift him aside, to step up and take her chances, but don't make him _laugh_, sweetheart- Marcel is no fool, these vamps are older, stronger, faster than any feisty little newborn witch, and if you think for a _moment _he will rely upon your skills when he is not sure, when he has seen no body and relinquished no hope-

He takes another bullet, deflects a second stake, and at the end of the corridor there is a surge, a fanning out, and though she casts she hasn't a candle to hold to the Bennett witch.

There is suddenly a volley: in the trenches he listened to sounds such as these, the whizzing of the bullets, the soft thud of their impacts, the screech of helmet under fire, bayonet slipped out into the blast, the cries of the frightened, the wails of the wounded, what a beast is man while he dies-

He presses her up against the wall to shield her with his back, his shirt torn to ribbons, his back ripped to tatters, and with his spine shot to pieces he takes her round the waist, and he flashes to the window at the end of the hall.

His shoulder impacts the glass, slips with a wet little pop from its socket, drives through pane and into smog-

He is shot through the face, his jaw splintered, his nose fractured, the witch screaming underneath him, the sky all in a carousel, and off the fire escape he ricochets, into the streets they plunge-

* * *

She is not _done_.

Don't run, little boy, not when there is still fun to be had, right, not when there are still ways to be broken, not when she hasn't had her fill-

Don't worry, she'll kill you afterward, isn't that _merciful _of her, isn't that _sweet _of her- look deep into her baby blues and tell her you aren't _reassured_, you don't want to nod your head, to offer up your neck, to lie with smile on your face while you are held down on the bed where your mother read you stories and your father kissed you good-night-

She takes the last of them by the throat, and she slams him down onto the nearest table so hard it snaps, sags beneath his thrashing weight, and what she sees is not a boy who wants to go home, who got himself in over his head, who followed his idols off into battle and did not understand- the other side- they're just some _faces_, right- they can have a family who will mourn and friends who will yearn once they are gone, once she has purged just a little of this freaking _rage_- do you know how long this has _built up_-

Stupid second-choice Caroline who never got the guy, who smiled so brightly anyway, who thrashed underneath him and worked alongside him, who couldn't understand why you chose this horrible man with his rough lips and his brutal fingers, who loved you _anyway_, who still would have _accepted_-

"_Please_," the boy wheezes.

"That's what I said," she tells him, and breaks his spine.

* * *

He has not landed on his feet.

With his thousand years of reflexes he has turned about mid-air, he has cradled her against him and cushioned her up above him, he has smashed through fire escape, off car bonnet, over pavement, his spine in splinters, his cheek in pieces, nose streaming, eyes burning.

He rolls to a stop on the sidewalk.

There is a chorus of car alarms.

The re-knitting of his awkwardly dangling shoulder.

Pedestrian feet, skidding cabs, curious shopkeepers-

The surging of the spectators, those circling hawks of the disaster.

He coughs blood.

He spits out a tooth.

Sophie lies still against his chest, face in his shirt, hands at his collar, her heartbeat a drum, her breath a storm.

She is lifted off him.

He reaches out with his crushed hand and struggles up on his shattered legs, and with her superficially scratched cheek and her shallowly cut eyebrow, she kneels down on the sidewalk beside him, and she presses her little hand gently to his improperly healed shoulder.

"I'm sorry," she tells him.

* * *

And for a moment, she nearly is.

Klaus Mikaelson, bedtime story.

Merciless monster, cavalier killer.

A thousand years of victims, whole families, entire _generations_, no child too innocent, no woman too pure.

Fearless, emotionless, pitiless.

But time did not take everything from him.

Somewhere along the way he let this girl inside, and he held on so _tightly_, he threw himself out that goddamned window with his ruined spine and his shattered shoulder just for a _chance_, and has she ever goddamned _once _even _seen _love like this-

Klaus Mikaelson is the worst thing this world has ever spawned, her mother warned her.

But he broke himself apart for this girl and with shoulder still dangling, eyes full of pain, he is still thinking of her, he reaches out to snag her sleeve, to pull her in close, to safeguard her carefully.

She fists his curls in her hands.

Most of him crushed, leaking, spread out in daubs and smears and pieces, he is still almost too fast for her. His fingers snatch her wrist and his strength yanks her down, and now she slams his head into the sidewalk, once, twice, _again_, until his fingers stop reaching and his hands stop twitching and his eyes full of pain blink closed, his lips half-parted, his nose crusted, his lashes red, his beard redder-

She kneels for just a moment, looking down at him.

The crowd screams.

She parts them like the red fucking sea, fleeing away into the maze of the city.

* * *

He uses his hands to help himself along, his legs useless meat behind him, his boots flopping, his knees bleeding, and she lets him edge just beyond the door, she gives him that little glimmer of hope, and then she grabs him by the ankles, and she drags him back.

The fire spreads, the smoke thickens.

The survivors twitch and the dead smolder and just beyond the window scream the sirens, the pedestrians who had _family _inside, _please_, let them _past_, they need to _see_-

She once had a family too, you know.

Maybe it wasn't perfect, maybe they rolled their eyes and they mouthed complaints behind her back, maybe they loved not so much as they tolerated, but they were _hers_, and she was always going to _have _them, don't you _understand_?

But that is _never _the way it goes, you hold on so _hard_, you try so _much_, and one by one they trickle away, by choice, death or coincidence they leave you, so don't you _sit here _and you judge her for cutting short a few of these lives which were going to end anyway; she is just so tired of being _hurt_, it is time for her to turn the tables, to strike first, to hurt _more_, _get _it-

Mommy-

Mommy, she's so _sorry _that she's not sorry.

She sits with the boy's head in her lap, and she pets his hair until the fire surges too high and the sirens veer too close and the survivors twitch no more.

* * *

He breaks his shoulder with a scream, bracing himself against the window of a restaurant whose patrons stare with open mouths and dropped silverware.

With a little snap it clicks back into its socket and for just a moment he leans his forehead against the glass, his breathing labored, his eyes swimming.

Sophie is gone.

But Ember's is only a block down the street.

* * *

She slips out the back of the restaurant.

* * *

He charges in through the front.

* * *

The entire city is all in a roar, Marcel's men out in force, the sidewalks packed, the streets watched, so she charms her way into a room at the Bourbon Orleans and she rinses the blood from her mouth and on the bed with its luxury mattress and its four-star pillows she shuts her eyes like she is ever going to sleep again.

* * *

He combs the buildings, threatens the locals.

He compels staff, superior, shopper.

No blonde here, sorry man, check somewhere else.

But he has checked, and he has bloody _checked_, and Ember's offered her perfume and the alley outside presented her blood, and beyond that there is _nothing_, into thin air she went, his calls unanswered, his fears unassuaged, don't make him tear down this whole bloody _town_, love-

* * *

When she was twelve, Elena fell out of a tree.

Caroline was fairly ambivalent about the whole endeavor in the first place, seeing as how she had _just _freaking done her nails, and excuse her, but if _you _had seen how high off the ground that thing was, there'd have been not enough no in the world for you either and just, what the hell was so freaking _enticing _about some dirty damn bug-infested tree in the first place?

But 'Lena did it anyway.

She was trying out some kind of new tomboy thing or something, and Jer had climbed all the way to the top with his skinny little prepubescent arms and his bare bark-scraped feet and if Jer, _Jer _of the armpit farts and the alphabet burps and the unwashed bangs could do it without breaking a sweat, then by freaking _God _Elena was going to do it twice as fast, half as messily.

She made it almost all the way to the top before her hand slipped and her foot followed, and three branches from the peak she fell screaming onto Bonnie, to collapse them both in a shower of dry autumn dust.

For twenty eternal seconds, neither of them moved.

Her feet stepped so slowly and her heart pounded so _loudly_, because oh God Oh God ohGodohGodohGodohGodoh_God _the fall had killed them both, look at their sprawled puppet limbs and their open staring eyes- the leaves circled in a bright Halloween cyclone, landed on limp hands, cute ankle boots, immobile lips, and still they just _lay _there, Mommy what to _do_, how does she _help_-

She sat down beside Bonnie's eerie marble corpse and she struck her one good blow to the chest the way she'd seen in a 6th grade health video once, and with a scream Bonnie shot straight up with Elena shaking in her arms, and with an even louder scream Caroline toppled backward onto her ass, scraping her hands, scuffing her shoes, throat burning, hands scrambling about in the brittle autumn rubble-

And then Bonnie's mouth clicked shut just once, a sharp little snap of the teeth, and when she opened it once more what poured out was this unadulterated _laughter_, a little hysterical, a lot loud, and for the next five minutes they could only sit gasping for breath, hugging knees, ribs, one another.

Today she lays on a bed that is not her own and she hugs a pillow that she has not for years stained with tears and lip gloss and mint chocolate dessert, and she remembers these girls with their young, young cheeks and their budding breasts and their slim little hips, these girls with clean hands, bright smiles, living eyes, and she understands that this bed she does not own and this pillow she has not stained and these hands with their old strawberry blood are all turning points.

One day you wake up, and your world has rotated.

Except that's not precisely correct, is it?

It's been rotating all along.

You just forget to watch the spin.

You stepped away from the window and for some time you stopped paying attention, you ignored the canting of the deck beneath your feet, the tipping of the walls, the slanted floors, tilted walls, you skipped from pane to pane before the revolution could catch your stride, you pretended _so hard_.

Life isn't fleeting.

These moments will not be mere footnotes in your crumbling old memory, you are going to hold onto them forever, you will be _suspended _in them forever, amber-shellacked, fly-frozen, no death here, fuck you and your scythe Mr. Reaper, you are not wanted, come back in a million years.

But then you found that damn window, and you noticed the trees out of place and the buildings not quite right and you looked down to the floor beneath your feet and it is now, it is right freaking _now _that you suddenly understand, that you grasp the way this revolution whirls on always and forever, how it flings you back and it leaves you behind.

Bonnie was always going to be there, until one day she wasn't.

Elena was always going to love her, until one day she didn't.

And Caroline- Caroline Forbes, head bitch, neurotic freak, pathetic second- she was always going to be _good_.

Fake smiles, happy friends.

In her armor of sunshine and candy, she was going to go forth, and she was going to slay Elena's fears, Bonnie's sorrows, Stefan's demons.

She is no monster by choice but by circumstance, and she will never stop trying to resist, she will never stop _fighting back_.

But today.

Today-

Today she struck out so hard and she reveled so deeply, and she is not sorry.

And she judges him.

She sits before him with her superior morality and her hands just as dirty and she looks over his misdeeds and his transgressions and his monstrous freaking choices, and she decides that he is not worthy, that she is so much _cleaner_, that never is she going to step out on her world of bagged blood, fuzzy victims, untouched humans.

She is going to be _normal_.

So her skin does not sag and her hair does not whiten and her bones stay always unburdened by arthritis- so she is still around to see Brangelina's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandkids- she is still _Caroline_ and she just wants the orchestra in tune and the balloons to hang straight and for everyone to just be _happy_.

But with her ears that will never be normal she hears a step in the hall and with her nose that senses too much she smells a beast in human skin, a predator wearing his prey, and she shifts herself off the bed.

They kick open the door and she hurls the dresser into their faces.

She snaps off one of the bedposts, stabs out, sweeps across, holds three of them at bay with this jagged weapon, twirling it in her hand, backing slowly, slowly toward the window, heart hammering, blood pounding.

With her free hand she snatches the vampire nearest her by the collar of his shirt, and she hurls him straight through the window.

There is this little frisson his scream makes, way down deep inside her.

Once she was the screamer, you know.

And now look at her.

* * *

There is another explosion.

The streets boil.

He is shifted about by screaming women, stampeding men, crying children, the sky smudged, the clouds raining soot.

He calls her again.

"Caroline, pick _up_."

This strain in his voice is known as weakness, and once Mikael would have beaten it out of him, but for three blocks he has sprinted, checking every spiritual bookstore, luxury hotel, downcast dive, and nowhere is she to be found, _no_where can he find the reassurance of a laugh, a smile, the touch of her hand, the prickling of her too-keen eyes-

The humans gather themselves in a little mob, swelling forward with tide insistence, pushing him back, throwing him about, and with a sudden lightning flash of his arm, he grabs hold of one of the little chattel and he throws them with a wet butcher's squelch against the doorway of the nearby Cake Café.

"Move out of my _way_," he snaps at the next, and like a little rabbit before the hounds the man scrambles away, clearing his path with great sweeps of his arm.

* * *

A leap carries her to the white-painted frame of the window.

She tenses, tips forward, readies heart and nerves and equilibrium-

Someone fists their hand in her hair and yanks her back, swings her in a pendulum surge into the wall, and with a cry she rebounds off it, spine aching, scalp tingling, and she will _make it _to that goddamned window, because she survived Daddy's hate and Mom's indifference and Damon's violations and it will not end _here_, not in a hotel room she does not know in a city she does not love-

She wants to go home to him, you see.

She doesn't know what this means or how far it will go but she didn't get to say good-bye and it has ended too many times like this, she has been denied too many farewells, she has so many things she never got to _say_-

She sinks her teeth into a stomach, her fist into a jaw, her foot into a shin.

She ruptures, she tears, she rips open wide.

She breaks away, and she lunges back toward that damn window.

Her boots touch the sill and her hands find the frame and it's so far _down _but what is a broken leg that will heal almost instantly; what is a snapped spine that will regenerate in a blink, take a breath, Forbes, maybe you were not prepared for all this extra time, maybe you do not understand how to make it _matter_, but neither are you prepared to relinquish your hold, so you take that damn breath and you let _go_-

Far down in the alleyway, there is a speck.

She steps off the ledge.

* * *

She hits the dumpster with the velocity of a cannon ball.

There is a snap, a grinding, hot white fire, teeth ground together and a tongue clamped tight, and then she rolls, flops belly first onto the pavement, scrambles frantically back onto her feet-

Broken pinky, cracked rib, shattered heel, it doesn't matter, just freaking _move_-

Behind her the dumpster lid buckles with a gunshot report and she hears the separate machine gun crack of a snapped shin, the wet gristle crunch of a dislocated knee-

She darts down the alleyway.

She feels her rubber muscles weaken and her inferno lungs burn out, and just another step, push yourself a little more beyond, come on, Forbes, _do it_-

How can she take this faith he has placed in her and just give _up_- how can she take this man who wants to feel but is so afraid of the penalty and just let him down- she is someone to be relied _on_, a punctual guest, a steady shoulder, an encouraging smile-

She ricochets off a wall, uses the momentum of this rebound to hurl herself through the open back door of a restaurant whose name she does not catch, sprints through the kitchen to burst with a gasp into the main dining room-

She skids to a stop.

Beyond the vast front window, New Orleans teems.

Humans in a panic, wolves in a riot, the vamps fired upon from all sides, some of them making it to cover, others perishing in the streets-

She watches the werewolves slip their weapons from beneath shirts, out of waistbands, hears the rapid staccato of their fire, little firework pop pop pops, the squelching of the bullets in supernaturally quick hearts, the screeching of the wounded, the sizzling of the flames, singed hair, charred skin, oh God, the freaking _sensations_- the cinder flaking of all these barbeque deaths, the humans who don't cross the street quickly enough, who can't make it from sidewalk to shop awning- please _stop hurting them _she can't think _she can't think _God everything is so _loud_-

She hears them fan out behind her.

She makes a run for the door but one of them is faster, and now he kicks over the heavy oak wood china cabinet beside this only exit point and he bars it with this mass, and around she spins, hair flaring, chest heaving.

Here's where you make your freaking stand, Forbes, make it a damn good one-

* * *

He spots her through the window.

He kicks the door open so hard the hinges tear with a banshee wail from the frame and the oak wood cabinet skids forward with a fingernail shriek, and in one single surge he is upon them.

She has one by the throat already.

He picks the other two up in either hand and into the wall goes one, through the window the other, and before either of them can recover he has stomped his way through the chest wall, into the heart, their screams in a shrill competition with the chorus outside, their blood staining him to the knee.

"You're-"

He pulls her into his arms, and he kisses her so bloody hard.

Her curls flatten beneath his hands and her lips yield against his own, and when he pulls away at last it is only to kiss her hair, her chin, to make his way in little gasping increments back to her mouth.

He was so bloody _afraid_-

Caroline- if he hadn't _found _her- if he hadn't come round that little volley at precisely this moment to catch a glimpse of her bright hair and her flushed cheeks- if he had returned to his home with hands empty and throat full-

He kisses her again.

"What the hell happened to you?" she asks breathlessly in between kisses, feeling his blood-starched beard and his stiff red shirt.

"Well I've had a rather trying day, love." He takes her carefully by the shoulders and sets her back just a little, studying her carefully, scrutinizing her thoroughly, her hair a bit mussed, her clothes a touch displaced, but everything intact, all of her _whole_, and the way this just…._opens _him-

He smiles helplessly.

* * *

She doesn't know why, but amidst all of this, the smoke, the screams, the vamps with their pierced chests, the wolves with their gaping throats, she feels this smile of his spread all throughout her, and she gives it back.

Not to reassure him, not because she is Caroline Forbes whose smile must never slip, whose armor must never dent, but because there is nothing else for her to do, because he takes something inside her, and he twists it so _sharply_.

Outside the guns roar and the dying respond and he takes her hands in both of his own, and he pulls her after him, through the kitchen, out the back door, into the alley.

He lets go of one but holds tight to the other.

"We'll have to take to the back alleys, love. Main street's a bit messy right now."

"Can we make it home?" she asks, curling her fingers around his and pressing herself unconsciously into his side.

"We'll make a try for it in a bit. I've got to round up Sophie first."

"What? Isn't she at the Ritz?"

"No."

"Well then where is she?"

"I'm afraid I've no idea, sweetheart. There was a bit of an incident at the hotel."

"Ok, then why don't we split up? We can cover a lot more ground that way."

He whips around with a scowl, his hand tightening on hers, his eyes nearly as tense. "You're joking."

"No, actually I'm not," she snaps, trying to shake him off.

He bears down harder.

"Look, maybe you've got this weird Prince Charming, knight-in-shining armor fetish wherein you swoop in to disembowel all the bad guys before you eat the princess yourself, but for your freaking _information_? I've been doing just fine today without you."

"Really." He cocks his head. "So I imagined those little minions of Marcel's, who only moments ago were merely one perverse Prince Charming away from ripping off your pretty little head?"

"Wow! Give yourself much credit, Mr. Modest? Maybe you missed the part where I already had one of them as you were bursting in through the door-"

"I don't have time to argue with you!" he hisses. "If you haven't forgotten, there's a witch running loose who-" He stops abruptly as the window beside them shatters with a terrible waterfall thunder, and suddenly she is wrapped in his arms, her face pressed to his chest, his chin in her hair, his heart going going going underneath her ear.

"What was that?" she asks him shakily.

"A grenade."

He keeps her tightly up against him, his head tilted, his eyes narrowed. "There's another little spat, down the end of this row."

"So where the hell are we supposed to _go_, then?" She has no more bloodlust to fuel her, no thirst left to slake, and suddenly she is just so damn _young_- eighteen, _eighteen _that's all she's _had_, remember, and she doesn't want to _die_, not now, not in a raining of bullets or a hailing of bombs-

"Look at me," he says roughly. "_Caroline_."

You are safe, he tells her.

He will never let her be anything else.

And _God _when did she start believing this man; when did she look up into his eyes and see just an artist who bookmarks Victor Hugo, who smiles so brightly and holds her so gently, who has death on his hands but so much more in his heart; when did she first begin to look _past_, and why can't she stop _doing _this- please let her go _back_, unlearn, rewind-

Sometimes she just needs the monster back so _badly_.

But there is so much sincerity in his voice and tenderness in his hands and one slow inhale stops the spinning in her head and the surging in her throat and one more squares her shoulders and steels her voice, and now she steps out of his arms and she cracks her neck, and very tentatively they pass this smile from before back and forth between them, her throat tight, his eyes soft.

"Ok," she whispers. "Let's do this bitch."

* * *

He has walked through a thousand battlefield such as these, dipped his boots in the blood of American patriots, German conquerors, British defenders.

They have never given him anything to fear.

But in her hand his fingers shake and beneath his ribs his heart flutters, and how _careful _he is, flitting from cover to cover.

A thousand years, love.

And still you have so many things to teach him.

* * *

Their bullets are laced, Klaus tells her.

One too many hits and he cannot save her in time, so keep her head _down_, her heart guarded, use the shops, the cars, the corpses.

Keep moving.

If he is brought down she is to run on ahead, he'll be there in a moment, don't even look back, not for a _second_, does she _understand_-

They make their way through this front line of men with beasts beneath their skin, dropping hearts as they go, her eyes focused, her fingers trembling, Klaus in a freaking cyclone all around her, deflecting bullets, taking hits, pushing forward.

His lips splattered, his curls stained, he walks on.

In the tenth grade she was assigned _All Quiet on the Western Front _and for three nights she huddled beneath her covers and she lived those trenches right alongside Paul Bäumer, blood beneath her fingernails, artillery in white stars above her, friends in pieces underneath her.

Today she scrambles through women and she steps over their children and the hands that reach out for her and the pleas that call out to her- God is this what he _felt_, shaking them off, stumbling on ahead, belly to the mud, rifle out before him- how do you put _this _away-

* * *

He comes through their bullets with Caroline still at his side, not a nick on her, and waiting for them on the sidewalk beyond is Rebekah with her arms crossed and her hip cocked.

"Where have you been?" he snaps.

"Out looking for your little tramp girlfriend," she snaps back.

"Excuse me? Tramp girlfriend standing right here, skank."

Bekah does not even acknowledge Caroline's little outburst. "Well, then, if you're done playing around out here, Nik, why don't we be on our way? I'm tired of wasting my manicure on peasants."

"I've got a bit of a problem to clean up. You can let yourself in, Bekah. Or out." He smiles. "Preferably the last."

"What are you even doing here?" Caroline demands.

"Do you mean what am I doing in my own house? The one you've rubbed your cheap perfume and your discount lingerie all over?"

"I mean, what are you doing not chasing around after my leftovers?" she asks sweetly. "Matt's a nice guy, but even his pity has its limits. And you know he never really got over Elena, right? Wasn't there another guy who…oh, that's right. Stefan."

Rebekah's petty little smile flattens and her brows come together and he looks up with a sigh, linking both hands behind his back.

"Ladies. There are a bit more pressing matters to deal with, at the moment. You can vie for your crown later, hmm?"

"Are you going to just drag her all around the city after you on this little errand of yours?"

He lifts both eyebrows.

Bekah rolls her eyes. "I'll get her back to the house. The police have got most of the streets back that way under control. They're barricaded, but they'll let us through, of course."

Caroline lets out a little huff of a laugh. "If you think I am going anywhere with you-"

He lets his grip on her hand slowly fall away and he stands staring so hard into Bekah's impervious eyes, his jaw tight, his stare warning.

If anything is to befall her, sister, his eyes promise and his hands will carry through.

If he returns to a single solitary _scratch _on this girl, Bekah-

"Take her," he says, and Caroline turns to him with her pretty little mouth gaping and her lashes fluttering.

"Excuse you, _Niklaus _Mikaelson, but I am not a piece of freaking _luggage_-"

"Your full name, Nik. I believe that means you're in trouble," Rebekah tells him dryly, and in a blink she takes Caroline by the arm and she vanishes away into the streets.

* * *

Nik.

Nik Nik Nik Nik Nik.

In his eyes she saw all the harm to befall her should she touch a single over processed strand on this girl's head, but she'll let you in on a little secret, dear brother.

She doesn't have to kill your darling _precious _little Caroline to ruin everything.

* * *

She is sitting at his desk with her feet up when he returns.

She keeps sorting documents, tapping them into neat little piles, shuffling these pages so carefully while she does not look at him, her lashes downcast, her lips thin. "Find Sophie?"

He steps into the room with his hands behind his back. "No."

"Well. Then I guess you just earned yourself a massive bitch-out for nothing."

He sighs. "Well, come on and let's hear it, then."

She slaps the papers down and flicks her eyes up to him at last, that little fire of which he is so appreciative positively blazing in those pretty blue-glass depths.

"I thought we were done with this."

"What?"

"You treating me like I'm some kind of- freaking _piece _for you to move around your stupid board, Klaus! What happened to, I don't know, trusting me to take care of myself? You just shoved me off on Rebekah like I was a _thing_! You didn't even _ask_ what I wanted to do, you just threw me at her and then went off on your own merry _freaking _way to take care of something that, you might have noticed, I have a little personal involvement in and therefore _maybe _would have liked to have been included."

"I did it to protect you," he protests, unknotting his hands and taking a step forward.

"I don't want to be _protected_. Just because I am eight ba_zillion _years younger than you does not mean that I am a child, and it doesn't mean that you have to take care of me, or that I can't make my own decisions and my own choices, and just- _God_, I could just claw your eyeballs out of your face right now!" She stands up with her hand to her forehead, and for just a moment, she shuts her eyes, and she shakes her head. "Is it so hard to give me a little freaking common courtesy?"

He takes another step forward, his jaw tightening. "You mean the same common courtesy which you extended to me this morning when you left without a word?"

She blinks and peels her hand slowly away.

Yes, here it is, love, this thing which has been put off by his fear and eclipsed by his relief. Here is what you left him _wondering _when you did not wake up in his arms, when you took all these new feelings which like all things fresh are so easily bruised and you ground them down to pulp.

"I had to think."

He advances one more step. "And tell me, love, when were you planning on coming back?"

"It's not like I was leaving- I _can't _leave."

"Yes," he says, and these bitter words take his lips and twist them so bloody hard. "How convenient for me." He extends a hand graciously. "And you, of course. All those heightened emotions, those tiresome hormonal peaks- pesky little things, aren't they? But." He smiles with nothing in his eyes. "At least you had at your disposal someone who knew what to do with them."

She presses her hand to her forehead once more and looks away with a little huff. "I just slept with the guy who killed my boyfriend's _mother_. That takes some processing, ok?"

And you don't think he hasn't things to _process_, Caroline, that when he opened himself to this emotion he has waited with bated breath for her to reciprocate he did not worry, fret, _panic_- what had become of this nightmare of nightmares, Klaus, _the _Klaus, who has no Achilles heel, who loves no woman, who fears no man- how vulnerable he has made himself, how defenseless he has become, how Mikael would have _laughed_- the boy has always been weak, Esther, he is practically a woman, see how he _cries _over this bloody beast-

She rests one hand beneath her chin and slopes the other across her stomach. "I didn't do it to hurt you. I just had to get out, ok? I had to decide what it meant."

It is never him for people like her, Rebekah informed him so carelessly.

But he has _seen_- there is _something_, isn't there, sweetheart?

You told him once that Mikael was not correct, that though his father deemed him unworthy it does not make it so, that what he has sought he is welcome to if only he will _try_, and hasn't he done this, hasn't he revealed to her everything he has ever tried to lose, hasn't he shown her of what he is capable, not just the brutalities but all the little tender pieces of the boy who didn't get enough-

He steps forward again. "And what did it mean?"

She tilts her head and softens her eyes.

"Klaus," she says, and she takes this one simple little syllable, and she twists it in his gut.

He stops.

"It can't- it can't be you, ok? I'm sorry. I didn't mean- I didn't mean to lead you on. We can't just-" She slips her hand out from beneath her chin, flattens it across her mouth, takes it away once more. "I can't be that person for you. I can't just look past everything. I can't see anything else."

Her eyes are so bloody _pitying_.

"I'm sorry," she says again, so _helplessly_.

Go on, love, straight into his heart, he is immortal, nothing scores him, no one can bring him down, it'll sting for only a moment, won't it, a creature like him-

* * *

Why did she say that -why did she _say that_- it's not what she _meant_- what she meant is that she is so very, very afraid, that she has looked past, she has seen something other, that the question is not whether she can ever love him but if she already does- and, God, the _answer _to this-

His whole face changes as she steps out from behind the desk, both arms around her stomach, her heart thundering, her throat dry.

Something in him retreats.

There is a closing down, a shutting off, and out from his eyes peeks the asshole who killed Aunt Jenna, who held Tyler's mother beneath the waves until she breathed no more, who thrust that lamp down deep into her gut and ripped her apart with his teeth.

"It doesn't matter," he says.

He smiles.

"After all, one only wants the things they can't have."

* * *

What do you mean, she wants to know.

There is a certain touch of perusal in lovemaking, a study of all the little reactions, the shuddering of the skin, the moaning of the lips, an inspection that may be likened to the scrutiny to which the written word is subjected.

To love, one must read.

To quote a favorite of his:

'Now she dwells on negligible details, perhaps tiny stylistic faults, for example the prominent Adam's apple or your way of burying your head in the hollow of her shoulder, and she exploits them to establish a margin of detachment, critical reserve, or joking intimacy; now instead the accidentally discovered detail is excessively cherished -for example, the shape of your chin or a special nip you take at her shoulder- and from this start she gains impetus, cover (you cover together) pages and pages from top to bottom without skipping a comma. Meanwhile, in the satisfaction you receive from her way of reading you, from the textual quotations of your physical objectivity, you begin to harbor a doubt: that she is not reading you, single and whole as you are, but using you, using fragments of you detached from the context to construct for herself a ghostly partner, known to her alone, in the penumbra of her semiconsciousness, and what she is deciphering is that apocryphal visitor, not you.'

You build a myth in your mind, and you take from the individual only what is necessary.

Perhaps she has been subject to this a time or two herself, hmm, and has she ever measured up? Surely she has grown used to this crude grafting, this messy cut-and-paste job: Elena's face, perhaps the delicious legs of that little lady werewolf of Tyler's- underneath them all disappears Caroline who has never mattered, who has only ever been the diversion and never the main event.

Isn't that all you have ever been, little Caroline Forbes who has never been chosen first- pieces to be strewn about, mixed up, replaced?

A whole?

No.

Don't _blame _him, love, he has only read these pieces she has set forth so openly; he has only sniffed round like all the others, satisfied his curiosity, sated his desire- she is only a pretty blonde itch he like so many before him has not resisted the impulse to scratch-

She slaps him so hard she snaps his head back with a crack.

Does it _hurt_, sweetheart? Does it scorch your throat, burn your eyes- do you stand here before him with your heart pierced and your stomach crumpled- do you wish you had never been so bloody _stupid _with your pitiful little _hope_-

She storms past him with shining eyes and shaking shoulders.

She has shredded, torn, _flattened _him, and still his feet turn to follow and his hands stretch out to touch.

* * *

She stands downstairs, and she smiles so _brightly_, listening to them fight.

Just a little touch.

She knew that's all it would take.

* * *

It is the quietest midnight Caroline has ever seen, here in the city.

In the distance the buildings still smoke and the sirens still flash, the windows red, the streets orange, all these little fragments of fire reflected here, burning there, and with these flames still crackling on all around her, she sits mechanically down on the bench in front of the Carousel Bar and she cries until she can't breathe.

* * *

He finds three tourists wandering about in the little backstreets of the Quarter, gaping their way through dust and death.

He rips them apart so viciously the walls around him drip red and his boots squelch loudly in the street, but it is not _enough_, they are over so _quickly_, they succumb so _easily_-

He prowls on.

He brings down an officer, a fireman, a boy whose mother fights him off with a scream.

He drains the child, tears the mother to pieces, guts the father so _slowly _as he rushes with a shout from the dim interior of the parking garage where his vehicle sits with its open door and its reminder chime.

Yes, how unlovable is he.

How right Mikael was, how _justifiably _Mother cast him aside with hardly a glance, how perfectly _entitled _Caroline was to reinforce these ideas they planted so long ago.

Monster, demon, abomination, _atrocity_- hate him, hunt him, but _love_, no of _course _not- to your strapping little puppy it goes, to Stefan with his body count nearly as mammoth, to the doppelganger, that center of everyone's world who has never shone half so brightly-

_Why_.

Why hover it before him if you were only going to snatch it _away_, Caroline- tell him _please_- he needs to _understand_-

He murders tourist, street performer, club owner, restaurant patron.

His rampage ends on a bench in Audobon Park.

He tilts his head back against its iron and he takes from his pocket the letters he folded so carefully, across his knee they go, over their creases smooth his fingers, but on the stars his eyes remain fixed, his throat working, his stare unblinking.

* * *

** Dublin, 1919**

The turn of the new year sees Collins elected head of intelligence.

There will be no more of this tiptoeing about; no longer is the policy to kill with kindness, to extend the olive branch, to wrangle the English into benevolence through soft words, gentle compromise, cautious suggestions.

Moderation?

No.

The reins are passed, the bit taken up; Collins gallops full steam ahead, sword raised, voice lifted.

G Division first, boys: names, addresses, families, all of these he requires, and in a great flock his aides descend upon stewards, hotel porters, waiters, reporters; with interviews conducted, information gathered, they return, flit in and out, drop off, take away, carry back, these little wasp humans going about their affairs with the bustle of the hive.

He watches attentively.

Truly here is a man who is worthy.

A quick sip from the wrist, a brief crack of the neck, and an entire eternity they will be granted, to scheme, maneuver, lord over all those whose minds are so less deft, whose thoughts are not so advanced. Collins is of the herd, yes, but he is not to be blamed for his inferior nose, his blind eyes, clumsy hands, undeveloped instincts; nine centuries ago he too was of this pathetic race called man, and look at how far he has _risen_- see how many things of which he is now capable- Collins too would adapt, improve, be made anew-

So turn him, Rebekah suggests.

So _flippantly_, she makes this proposal.

But there was a time, nine hundred years ago, when he put out his hand for acceptance and he was instead turned away; there was a woman who was supposed to love him always, who should never have turned him down, and yet out he was cast.

On her doorstep he stood, stained, shocked, sickened.

Mother, what's _happening_.

Mother, open up.

Mother, let him _in_.

Mother, how can you not love him anymore- mother please accept him- mother where does he _go _without his _family- _mother who else would want him _now_-

Collins looks, and he sees only a man's hands, his human skin, fragile bones. What is unbreakable is sheathed in this flimsy mask of man, tucked away behind clever mimics and crafty imitations.

All man is similarly enclosed, muffled by layers of bone, skin, nails, his blackness hidden, his monstrous heart tucked away, but though man is often rotten, this sepsis shows itself only in harsh words and evil deeds. The monster lurks, but he never breaks the surface.

But to peel away these layers, to show himself as one who is not just monster at heart but beast in appearance as well, a true nightmare of the children, a fable of man given flesh-

Bekah-

If he were turned _away_, Bekah.

This boy _likes _him, Bekah- no supernatural tricks, no rabbit flourishing of this magic with which his dead mother imbued him so long ago-

He is simply accepted.

Niklaus is a monstrosity, Nicholas a friend.

How long has it _been _since he has been one of those, since he has _had _one of those, Bekah?

* * *

For their people who have been caught out, who while away days, months, years behind the gates of the gaol, who await the hangman's noose or the firing squad's bullet, Collins develops a plan.

Something of the dramatic, the man has in him.

February brings about the first of these operations: the springing of De Valera, McGarry and Milroy from Lincoln, a rather colorful affair of smuggled drawings, frosted cakes, false keys. From the prison arrives a postcard, courtesy of a Kilarney man posted at Manchester, and Collins turns this postcard about in his hands, studies it with furrowed brow and pursed lips, and then along to Gerry Boland it is passed, who takes the dimensions of the key sketched out in steady hand upon this postcard, and turns it into something tangible, a thing of jagged brass and soft nickel.

McGarry's wife folds it away between the flour in its Christmas dusting and the butter with its oil pools; into the oven it goes, back to England it is smuggled. Pretty little thing, white glaze, cream layer- 'to give the men a taste of home', insists the Kilarney man who visits the prison bearing this gift in hand, but the gift is refused, the man turned away.

But not so easily is Collins dissuaded, not so effortlessly will he be beaten.

Next is a blank key and a file, and into the system these make their way, behind the walls, through the bars- a win at last, a success finally, and to England Collins goes to oversee the final arrangements, the hiring of the taxis, the placement of the men, the strength of gate, guard, gun.

On the third it is time.

Collins, Harry Boland and he creep their way toward Lincoln from the cover of a nearby field, and at its edge now he crouches with torch in hand, heart thundering, smile flickering.

Collins kneels beside him. "Three little flicks, Nicholas, then a long one." He watches the prison with lowered eyebrows, his fingers tapping, tapping, his knee jiggling, his sweat pungent.

He holds up the light, gives the signal, subsides back into the grass.

Boland clears his throat softly.

"Light the bloody thing, Milroy," Collins murmurs.

There is an exquisite torture in waiting, an anticipation of blazing bullets, roaring trucks, the guards on the march, the prisoners in a panic, all of their careful preparations in tatters, the humans taking to their heels, he running along beside them with his manufactured gasps and his simulated fear.

He sets his chin against the handle of the torch, flicks a look over at Collins' tense face and white hands.

Steady your breaths, still your fingers.

Your worries are inconsequential, mate.

In his care you will come to no harm, friend.

"Light the fuckin' thing!" Collins hisses, a soft roar, and now with his superior eyes he spots first the starting flicker: a little orange tongue beyond the bars, a living thing of twisting flame and boiling smoke.

He points.

"Bloody fucking time."

They cross to a side gate, Boland nervously on edge for patrolling guards, he with hands in his pocket, that bloody officer's tune still in a whirl inside his head.

Collins tries the lock with the key he had made back in Dublin; the little bugger jams; the gate protests.

Its shrill metal cry is an explosion in his ears.

Collins erupts in a stream of expletives, jiggles the key, knocks his palm with a hearty slap into the end of it, jiggles it once more, twists it sharply-

It snaps off with another horrible screech and he touches a hand to his ear with a wince.

De Valera and the others are already on the go, their footsteps soft, voices low, a creeping procession of careful feet and anxious whispers.

He cocks his head, listens for the sounds of the nailed boots in pursuit, the clicking of a rifle loaded, a pistol primed.

The yard is silent.

The men move about unhindered on quiet panther tiptoes.

"Dev- the key's broken in the lock!" Collins hisses.

"Hang on just a moment, Mick. Let me see if I can knock the piece out with my key."

He hears a fumbling on the other side of the gate, a boulder grinding of steel within steel, a muttered curse, a triumphant murmur.

The gate swings open.

Collins' face is transformed.

For centuries he has wondered what it would be like to be looked upon in this way, to be viewed not with naked terror but with unchecked joy.

From his father he learned of all the different ways a face can be altered in anger, the droop of the mouth, the tightening of the eyes, the pursed lips, red cheeks. Not until Elijah came along with his extended hand and his soft eyes did he remember that there existed other expressions, different options, that a mouth which strips down can also build back up.

But since the time of Katerina Elijah has never quite looked upon him in the same way as these comrades of arms who take a moment to congratulate one another with pounded shoulders and triumphant embraces: what these men see is one just like them, young, strong, desperate to live, willing to die.

His big brother has not seen in him anything to which he can relate for a very long time.

Finn deemed him too monstrous, Kol too weak, Elijah too dishonorable.

But Collins and his companions see only a man, a thing of rough edges, short tempers, bad mornings.

Imperfect, occasionally intolerable, acceptable anyway.

"Back to the hotel, boys!" Collins bids them all, and in less than half an hour the entire operation is at a close, he and Boland and Mick on a train heading back into the heart of London.

He looks out the window with a smile.

What a grand century this is shaping up to be.

* * *

Robert Barton is next.

Dick Mulcahy is sent to Mountjoy with all necessary tools tucked away, and when the warden suffers a convenient moment of inattention, he pushes these little paraphernalia of the ambitious prisoner across the counter, and into Barton's riding breeches they disappear.

Quite the sweaty little moment, he's told. The skitter of the saw upon the counter, the warden's booming laugh, the thundering replies of his fellow guard, Mulcahy's fingers slipping upon the steel, Barton's nearly as wet, the grate of zipper, the snagging of cotton, breathless fumbling, storming hearts- how magnificent it must have been to hear, smell, taste.

This is nearly as succulent.

The night is wet, the lamps shining, the street in a vast black mirror underneath them.

Mountjoy looms.

So _nervous _is this little group of volunteers in a cluster around him. How rapidly their frightened hearts beat and their terrified blood thunders; how carefully they exhale their thin white breaths, flex their stiff little fingers beneath layers of March arthritis.

Not a whiff of spring in the air tonight. Winter: in like a lion, out like a lamb, hmm, boys?

Over the wall whistles the soap.

"All right, boys," Rory O'Connor hisses. "There's the signal."

They take up the rope with its weighted end, give it a tentative swing, whip it back once more, let it fly.

He holds his breath.

Tom has tagged along on this one and he clutches now at the sleeve of his jacket, his face bled, his fingers shaking, and together they stand, watching the horizon of wall and sky, gray cinderblock, black midnight, his grip nearly as eager as Tom's, their hearts almost in sync. "Sounds like it hit, didn't it, Nick?" he whispers.

It did indeed; he listens to the little clink of its contact, to the scrabbling of anxious feet and overeager hands on the other side of the wall. "He's got it."

"You've got good ears, Nick."

He smiles.

They shake out the large blanket O'Connor keeps tucked under his arm, stretch out into a circle to hold it in a parachute billow between them.

Barton and his saw have already made it through the bars; he has only to pull on the rope now and haul up the rope ladder attached to its other end, a simple maneuver which should give his young back and sturdy arms no difficulty.

But there is still a moment, as there is in all instances such as this. The volunteers with their firemen's net of a blanket between them have been solidified, reduced to narrowed stares and clenched teeth, poor little Tom white as a sheet, and as the scraping on the other side of the wall begins at last to ascend, to grow nearer, they all hunch their shoulders, tuck their chins down into their collars, breathe their thin white breaths more cautiously than ever.

Barton's head clears the wall.

Beside him, Tom's face lights up.

Back at Batt O'Connor's, Collins is jubilant. "This is only the beginning," he asserts with shining face.

* * *

And so it is.

Mountjoy Jail is struck again, thirteen days later.

There is the signal to the men in the exercise yard, a sudden flurry of prearranged snowballs, this staged fight ranging all across the yard, while the wardens look on with crossed arms and white eyelashes.

Another signal.

The rope is weighted, its end hurled up over the wall.

The prisoners surge forward.

Two of the wardens are friendly, and bear their restraint cheerfully.

The third gets a knock to the jaw.

One by one the men clamber up the ladder, and when he reaches the top the last of them cranes his neck and calls back down into the yard: "Any more of you coming?"

He laughs helplessly, watching the men who opt to stay behind waving cheerfully, the rescue party all in a roar as they gallop away into the streets, Liam brandishing his hat, Tom blowing kisses.

An impatient Collins is updated back at the Wicklow hotel, and later that night in his office at Cullenswood House he throws down his pen and he leans back and he laughs until he cannot see.

"The whole bloody prison, hmm, Nicholas?"

"At least twenty of them, anyway."

"Well, then." He bursts out in another round of mirth.

The man laughs with all of him, his head thrown back, shoulders trembling, face streaked, and for a moment he can only marvel.

In nine centuries, when has he done anything with such passion?

And then he is drawn into this simple movement of the lips and throat and tongue, such a little thing, really, but what a _release _it is, this letting go, this tipping back of the head and unlocking of all the little knots in his shoulders.

* * *

On nights he is not otherwise occupied, he sits with Bekah in his studio and he listens to her moan on as he sketches.

A new one has hurt her feelings, loved her, left her, unfortunate bloke, and now she tries so bloody hard not to cry, sitting with her little feet tucked up underneath her on the chair across from his easel.

"Give me his name, sweetheart, and I'll tear out his heart," he offers sincerely.

"Nik," she sniffles, "why don't any of them love me as much as you do?"

He sets down his charcoal, pats the arm of the chair in which he perches, and she gets to her feet with a rustling of silk and crosses the room to settle herself next to him with her skirts spread carelessly and her feet swinging restively.

He rests his head against hers. "Why would you need them to?"

* * *

The raids are incessant.

Collins keeps multiple offices, of course, and these are moved about as necessary to keep the men safe and the papers secret, but occasionally there are searches sprung upon them too swiftly to be avoided.

He is upstairs at Vaughan's with Tom searching newspaper clippings for mention of the British troops when he hears the thundering of the porter's feet on the stairs.

He jerks his head up; his senses grope beyond the pounding of these polished shoes to the streets outside, the two dozen hearts and twice as many boots, the soft idling sighs of the lorries, and bloody _goddamned _hell how could he have been so _stupid_-

The world must often be reduced to background noise so that he may retain his sanity but there is no excuse for this, not with this boy beside him humming happily, chattering on about Bekah, the war, the little infant brother whom he lost to influenza, whom still misses so very very much-

He seizes Tom by the collar as the porter bursts into the room. "Raid! Bloody hell, I'm _sorry_- they were here so _fast_-"

"Nick," Tom says hoarsely as he waves the porter back out the door and it clicks shut behind him. "What the fuck are we going to do-"

He could kill them all, of course.

Twenty-four humans- he'd hardly strain a pinkie.

But Mikael still lurks somewhere out in this great wide world, and he is not yet done with this island, he doesn't want to be set to flight again, to be driven forward without a home, to flee from continent to continent with his father's breath upon his neck, and twenty-four corpses is quite the pile.

No two unarmed mortals could possibly execute such a feat.

Tom could be compelled, the hotel staff as well, but if he were to miss one-

"Out the window," he hisses, shoving Tom roughly toward it.

"Nick, the papers-"

"No time," he says, and as Tom hoists himself over the sill, a leg on either side, he pushes a chair up against the door, the heels in a steady drumming on the stairs, the revolvers cocked, the batons unclipped, and now the boy swings himself out the window to hang swaying from his feeble human fingers, his breathing so bloody _ragged_- take a deep one, mate, you won't get another-

The door shudders; the chair leaps.

He springs up onto the ledge and now the door splinters, bows inward, the chair clattering over backward; the uniforms swell up through the opening, shouting as they go, but he has already dropped over the side, his knuckles skinned, his hat lost; in a slow spiral it flutters away underneath him, to land with a soft splash in the mud far below, the boy breathless beside him, their hearts suspended, fingers touching-

The RIC loot the room thoroughly, tucking away this and that as it catches their eye.

They hang for so long, the boy's human strength beginning to flag, his knuckles tightening, his forearms straining.

Leave the bloody room, he thinks with his eye upon Tom's hands.

They toss aside a book, pull down a wall hanging, kick over a chair.

The boy needs to _breathe_, to stretch his fingers, to work the kinks from his shoulders- there are the bloody _papers _right _there _you have what you need, your work is done, the rebels fled, their contraband left behind- leave the bloody _fucking _room-

Tom shifts his hands, brings his boots against the side of the hotel to scrabble carefully around for a foothold, his lips white, his knuckles whiter, the British still merrily on about their task, how much longer can they _search_-

He can hold the boy up with one hand, but if whatever appendage he grasps can hold on just as securely is of course the question.

If he takes him by the hand the boy's fingers may falter; by his coat and the seams will give out.

Too far to make a leap for it: the boy will be shattered.

A bloodbath, then.

His exposure for the boy's life.

But his _father_- sorry, mate, but you don't _know _the man, of what he is capable, the bloody _nightmares _he evokes in _him_, the most powerful of God's great creatures- with one press of his hand he could squeeze this thing of stone and steel to dust, rip the foundation from its struts, tear street from earth, hearts from men, taste the livers of beasts, the throats of children, and yet before his father he is _nothing_, a bloody _nobody_- do you understand how this man has hunted, hounded, _haunted_ him-

But the boy's eyes.

Like Kol's with their fine little lashes of chestnut and gold.

The British ransack, the boy slips.

Tom Cullen is only a human- what does it matter that he looks upon him as his family should- what does it _matter _that he has Kol's eyes, Finn's smile, Elijah's gentle _bloody _hands-

He slips his hand over the boy's wrist and clamps his fingers down so tightly the boy's knuckles creak beneath his touch.

The officers finish at last.

They spend an eternity shuffling out of the room.

The door swings shut behind them and he hauls Tom up over the sill, grasps him beneath the arms, gets him round the waist, slings him gasping onto the floor.

"Oh Jaysus- Nick, can you find a pulse? Am I dead? Oh bloody hell," he pants, and then, incredibly, there is a rippling all throughout him, a tensing of his shoulders, a sudden release, and abruptly the boy bursts, lies there with his arms flung out to either side of him and his face tucked into his shoulder, laughing hysterically.

He stabs his finger up without taking his face from his shoulder. "Soon as I can get back on my feet I'll be givin' you a kiss, Nick."

* * *

On the hurling field they strip off their coats to play bare-armed in the cold April rain, and when the sweat begins to fly, the brows to drip, they are divested of their shirts as well.

Boland smacks the sliotar toward the goal; Liam intercepts, flips the little ball up onto the end of his hurley and whips himself around to sprint down the field toward the opposite goal, legs pistoning, arms pumping, the hurley held carefully out in front of him, the silotar bobbling on its end.

Tom hurls himself shoulder-first into Liam's ribs, slamming him off-course, the silotar taking a dive, Liam's hurley angling awkwardly out as he reels for balance, the little ball lost in a sudden flurry of pounding feet and charging men.

"There's no bloody checking!" Liam calls, his voice lost in this elephant stampede of roaring players.

Tom runs on.

"There's no bloody _checking_! It's against the rules!"

Tom turns about with smile on his face, cheeks pink as a girl's, sweat on his brow, sun in his little infant beard, and for a moment he is struck dumb.

This boy-

Kol once had a smile such as this, and he showed it without malice, he looked _up _to him with his five extra years of accumulated wisdom- Niklaus teach me to use the bow; Niklaus may I ride your horse; Niklaus show me how- Niklaus guide me please-

He swallows very hard.

"Beg your pardon, Mr. Tobin! Did I ruffle your skirt when I hit you?" Tom hollers back, slinging his hurley across his shoulders and draping both arms over it.

Someone jostles Tom's elbow, another man barrels into his back, and now all around him explodes a friendly tussle, Collins in the middle of it, Boland off to one side carefully juggling the silotar on the end of his stick, punches thrown, mud gouged, arms flailing, curses exchanged.

He wades in on Tom's side of it, locking one man beneath the crook of his elbow as he fends off another with his free hand, and now Tom bends down to the man gagging within this unbreakable headlock and he smears a handful of mud across his cheeks, giggling like a bloody girl.

"Your left, Nick!" he warns cheerfully, and a thrown hurley sails over his head as he ducks smoothly, the man still pinned between bicep and ribcage. "Hey now, boy! None of that!" Tom yells to the owner of the hurley. "I'll take you home to me mother and let her set you straight- see if I bloody don't."

Tom upends a man with a hurley to the back of the knees; he lets the boy struggling against his ribs go and nudges him with a human shove back into the center of this hurricane, and now he looks up and somehow it has become him and Tom against the rest of them, the boy swinging happily, Collins advancing with playful menace on his face, the rest in a circle all around, faces smudged, hands black-

He darts his hand out for the silotar rolling about forgotten on the field, pegs one of their assailants in the stomach with it, gets an armful of Tom as the boy suddenly staggers up against him.

He shoves him back up.

Tom toes up a clot of grass, kicks it with a triumphant cry against Collins' chest, keeps the great man at bay with a good-natured poke of the hurley he unearths from the sludge beneath his boots.

Collins and his boys gush forward with a roar.

"Don't let 'em take you alive, Nick!"

They are engulfed.

Someone's fist grazes his eye; Collins' arms seize his waist; Tom throws as fast as he can collect these little tufted lumps of wounded grass with their viscous black blood, handing them across, passing them over with deft little flicks of his wrist, and now Collins and his comrades are driven back by this volley, turned about, sent flailing up against one another, dirt in their eyes, grass between their lips-

"Charge, you bloody bowsies!" Mick screams.

Tom falls to a knee.

He throws blindingly, skirting the edge of human capabilities, arm working frantically, fingers scooping madly, and now beside him the boy scrabbles his boots back into some semblance of order underneath him and is swept off his feet by this cresting wave of men who surge forward with shoulders lowered and mouths open.

Tom disappears with a yell.

He is laughing helplessly by the time Collins reaches him, the boys in formation behind him, all of them a hammer which strikes its one fatal blow, slamming him down onto his back, the mud foaming up in a great geyser underneath him.

Tom lolls back against his chest with both arms spread wide, breathing heavily.

"Nick, you gave it your best, boy; no shame in admitting defeat now," Tom pants.

"Me?" he asks, blinking his eyes open against the mud. "You're the one who couldn't keep a few bloody-"

"You're both in for it, you young scuts," Collins interrupts with a smile, crouching down in front of them, that thick black comma of hair over his eye, hands clasped between his knees. "Back on your feet, you fuckin' poofters."

"'Poofters'?" Tom demands, unmoving. "You're just jealous, Mick- Nick makes a bloody fine pillow."

"That's what I was just sayin' about your ma's tits the other night, Cullen," one of the men pipes in to roars.

"Ain't got nothing on your sister's, Connolly," Tom volleys back, and the struggle begins anew.

* * *

Tom has got his hands on a firearm permit.

From Mick they appropriate two British uniforms and stand fussing over them in his studio beneath Bekah's critical eye, her lips pursed and her hands clasped.

Tom fumbles nervously; he smoothes carelessly.

He dusts off the boy's shoulders and tidies his coat, sets his cap straight upon his head with a little encouraging smile, and with a soft huff of a breath the boy nods, smiles anxiously back, stands looking at him with those eyes which trust too much and see too little.

"How do we look, Bekah?"

"Convincing," she admits. "Are you really just going to waltz into the gun shops and buy revolvers right under their noses, Nik?"

"We have a permit," Tom puts in. "It'll be all right, Bekah. Are you worried?" he asks hopefully, his eyes alight, hands in a sweaty twist before him.

Suck hope in his voice, over a _woman_. He has at his disposal a dozen of the bravest men in Ireland- he is possessed of so many friendships, that elusive connection of man which for so many years has run on out of his reach, and it is Bekah he wants, _Bekah _for whom he yearns when at his shoulder stands a friend who will never leave his side, who has never cast him out-

He takes Tom by the elbow and shoots Bekah his nastiest look.

"We'll be on our way now, sister."

She rolls her eyes. "Oh, don't look at me like that, Nik. I don't want your bloody little boyfriend," she hisses under her breath as he pushes Tom on ahead of him out of the room.

They run about the city purchasing arms, handing them out, tucking them away, tipping their caps to the constables, the ladies, the little girls with their round doll eyes, and when in the clammy excitement of darting about Dublin Tom at last forgets Bekah and her charms, they retire to one of the taverns for a drink.

Nick, the boy slurs from the depths of his cup.

Nick, I've got three brothers-

"You have two," he corrects, sliding the boy's beer away from him. "Why don't you go on and have a bit of water, mate?"

Tom smiles up at him from his slump, chin in his hands.

Three, Nicky me boy.

Two Cullens, one Murphy, he says, and how bloody tight this boy makes his throat.

Nicholas Murphy, friend, comrade-in-arms, brother.

He purses his lips and looks down at his hands with a little smile.

* * *

Don't you ever get lonely, Nik, she wants to know when he comes home with his latest conquest in flakes on his lips.

Don't you ever want to _keep _one of them?

He pulls out his letters, and for a very long time he sits with them unfolded across his knee reading words that will never be meant for him.

Bekah-

Do you think he has never wanted more? Do you think he reads these words and he takes in these affections and he is not occasionally touched by their warmth- do you think he watches these couples go arm in arm about their business and he does not wonder why his mother took this away from him, why ten centuries ago she looked into his frightened eyes and she slid his shaking hands from her own and she sent him cringing backward with her bloody _accusations_-

Niklaus, you are a monster.

Niklaus, you are no longer worthy.

Niklaus, _love_, please, how could you even _suggest _such a thing- why would you think you _deserve _anything of the sort, you with your red lips and your red hands-

But you _gave _this to him, mother.

You forced this thirst upon him and then you refused to take it back, and all he ever bloody _wanted _was to be accepted anyway, to never not be your _son_, no matter what he did, no matter who he became.

Women are the original betrayer, and he will not be hemmed in by them, Bekah, he will not obey the crook of their puppeteer fingers or the fluttering of their Benedict lashes- he will not play their _fool_, Bekah, not when he knows what waits beyond-

But does he yearn, sister- does he desire from time to time a warm body that exists for more than just his physical pleasure, who will lie afterward in his arms, tolerant of past deeds and future atrocities-

Yes.

Neither mother nor time have yet extinguished so much of Niklaus the boy.

* * *

Another raid sends them out the window of Gresham's and into the streets where they scatter like rabbits and regroup in a huddle.

Tom has run out with no shirt on, his shaving cream still in a thick white fur about his chin, Boland with only one boot, Mick sans his jacket.

They press up against the wall behind their backs, hardly breathing, midnight in a dense fog all around them, the soldiers groping about with their bright white torches, the men's hearts going like jackhammers.

With the peelers all about them they are forced to stay put, crouching on shivering thighs, their lips white and their hands whiter, Collins with his arms round Tom as the boy kneels flinching in the May wind.

He puts his head back against the wall and shuts his eyes.

He listens to Tom's breathing slow, to his heartbeats dwindle, to his fingers relaxing.

"How are you doing down there, Harry?" Collins hisses across him.

"Oh, grand, Mick, just grand."

The dryness in the boy's voice gets a smile out of him.

There is a long moment of silence among these four hunted men, their sighs soft and their thoughts private, and then from Collins issues a soft little huff of a breath, a scraping of shoulders on brick, a pained little thread of a whisper.

"I hate that it's been brought to this, Harry. I never bloody wanted it to be like this."

Mother, he thinks with his head upon the wall.

Did you ever wish something similar for him, for him to be not murderer but man; did you see his future in your dreams, his curly-haired children, his doting wife- did you want something _more_ when you pushed him out into the world and you held him screaming in your arms-

"Tom's a good lad, you know. He ought to be home with his mother."

A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them, Victor Hugo once alleged.

But where were _yours_, mother, when he needed them most- where were _yours _when father struck him down- did you ever understand how badly he just needed you to _make it stop_-

And Tom- Tom who was once a boy with no blood on his hands- where are these fabled arms of the nurturer, giver of life, healer of wounds- where was this _mother _when he took his young life and he hurled it blindly into this machine called war, to be crushed within its cogs-

What defines a mother is not arms but absence.

Tenderness, no- she is made of treachery, she ignores her son's troubled sleep to soothe her own, she looks silently on, she stands wordlessly by, and still he loves her so bloody _much_.

Nine hundred years, mother, and he still feels his hand upon your heart and he hears your screams in his ear, and he aches.

* * *

He is at his easel one night when there is a sudden explosion of boots on pavement, a ragged hissing of breath between the teeth.

But he is accustomed to a soundtrack such as this, he knows by heart its crescendos and its peaks and its soft pianissimo fade-outs, and so he paints on.

And then up the pathway these boots veer, over Bekah's straggling little violets they hurdle, on his front step they land.

Someone hammers their open palm against the door.

"Nick- Nick open the bloody door- _please_…_fuck_- Nick, _please_-"

Bekah reaches the foyer before he, but it is his hand which alights first on the door handle.

"Nick," Tom gurgles, and sags forward into his arms.

He cradles the boy all the way down to the floor.

"Nick, I didn't tell them anything, I swear I didn't tell them anything," he sobs.

They have smashed his lips, crushed a cheekbone, bloodied forehead, nose, scalp.

He takes the boy's cheeks very carefully between his hands. "Tom," he says softly. "Who picked you up?"

Tom spits a tooth onto the floor, and now his face clenches, seizes up, and he takes one pale splintered hand, and he presses it so tightly to his hot red eyes.

Bekah watches wordlessly.

"I don't know- I don't know, Nick. I was at Vaughan's…I tried to get out the window, but I couldn't- they don't _know _anything, I promise, I never said a word-"

"Listen to me," he says tightly, slipping his hands from the boy's cheeks to close them gently round his shoulders. "Tom, look at me."

Tom peels his hands from his eyes and dabs one of them beneath his nose, his eyelashes clumped, his lips clotting.

"You are not going to remember anything I'm about to do. Vaughan's was raided, you made it out the window, and you spent the rest of the night popping round the city, keeping them off your tail. Do you understand me? You were never captured. They didn't hurt you."

"Ok, Nick."

He bites his wrist and holds it out to the boy. "Drink."

Sometimes she is convinced that she has lost him, she says quietly when the boy has finished.

Niklaus was this boy who loved so much, who just wanted something in return.

And then mother ruined him.

But there is still a piece left, isn't there, Nik?

* * *

He has no names.

But that's all right, mates.

A few dozen of your comrades will do just as nicely.

He selects a barracks at random, and he bars the door behind him.

How would you go about showing a captured rebel the error of his ways, he wants to know.

You, the little one with the fringe round his lips.

Why don't you go on and demonstrate on this fine young volunteer he has here beside him.

The men watch unblinking from their bunks.

* * *

The rural little corners of this country are truly spectacular.

Charcoal will not do them justice, and so he instead brings his watercolors, packed up in a little leather kit, and on one of the hills he settles with this kit beside him in the grass, his packet of Arches Cold Press across his knees, and for hours he indulges himself in the scent of heather, the trilling of birds, bleating sheep, scratching brush.

Through the grass sighs the wind and along the roads rumble the distant automobiles with their little gray exhalations, the sun in a golden reproduction upon their hoods, and in between strokes of green and dabs of yellow, he lifts his head, and he stares out over this land which has taken so much and given back so little.

Two hundred years from now, this land will have been changed by time and technology, altered with new houses, updated automobiles, superior telephone wires.

In this way has all of history passed him by.

Collins and his men fight because there is so little time, because they envision for their children an era which subsists only in the dreams of revolutionaries, but so too did the peasants of France take up their arms, so also did the Americans rise to the occasion, and for centuries before them has man pushed back against the tyranny of giants, and though he may fight alongside them never have they been more than an annotation in this infinite existence through which he travels.

Man fights because he venerates life, he is enchanted by freedom, he wants something _more_.

But why should he revere life when it makes no mark upon him? Where is the _awe_, for one such as him, who battles out of boredom, who shoots out of amusement, who holds no beliefs, who can die for no cause?

If the beauty of life lies in its transitory nature, of what appeal does it hold for him- wars over in a blink, years passed in a flurry, friends dead in a moment- Mick, Tom, Liam, Harry, all of them merely a chapter in this eternal narrative with no editor to clip its length-

He sets aside his brush.

He wants-

He wants for just a moment to taste this thing called _purpose_, to not just imitate but to _experience_, to tuck his revolver beneath his jacket and to walk among the people with sweating hands, knocking knees, to understand that to be caught is death, to risk it anyway, to savor his cigars, to relish his beer, each may be his last, his breaths are numbered, his days uncertain-

Tom will pass, Collins fade away.

He cannot hold onto them indefinitely.

These boys with their booming laughs, their accepting hands, their warm bodies tucked like his brothers before them to either side of him- time will come, and it will wash them away, and forever upon this shore from which they are snatched will he be abandoned.

There is Bekah, sweet eternal Bekah with her smiles that still warm his chest, but one love is not enough, mother left such a _hole_, you see, and this dear sister who like all others has left him before- she has been tethered to him by this bloodline they only partially share, she never _chose _him, she did not survey the crowd and pluck him from its surge, here he is, the one I want, never can there be another.

But in him Collins saw real bloody _worth_, and Tom welcomed him in so _easily_, and in their eyes he is not tainted, father's prejudice has not colored their view, he is merely one of their own, not Niklaus but Nicholas who shares their beds, who fights for their principles-

And in a mere fluttering of his lashes this will be gone.

The men dust, the hostilities textbooks.

They have shed blood, sweat, tears, and for _what_- to be memorialized in print, to be reduced to a tale, a passing mention, a brief summary in this existence which knows no end- ah, yes, the 20th century, quite the little lark that was, what passion was in those men-

Everything everyone every _time_- always will they leave him behind.

* * *

July brings about soft rain, temperate winds, new tactics.

The DMP has been sent their letters, the G men warned, the officers called off, and still they persist, still they do not _listen_, they refuse to believe.

And so man resorts to violence, as he always does, because though he assures himself I am not of the beast, canine is below me, feline inferior, instinct drives their teeth but civilization stays mine, he succumbs with hardly a protest.

In the beginning, four are chosen.

There can be no moral qualms, no shamed reservations. You will end these men in cold blood, let no infant son sway you, allow no pretty-cheeked wife to turn you about, fire until the hands twitch no more and the eyes flick no longer.

Detective Sergeant Patrick Smythe is marked first for death. For so long he has been advised to lay off or be shot, but this one- bit of fight in him, he does not bow, he will not be bullied, there is his duty to God, family, country, for no terrorist does he bend his knee or tip his head.

In Millmount Avenue they shoot him down.

There is the chattering of the bullets, the singing of ricochet, the squelching of entry wound, exit hole, his companions cursing all about him as Smythe stumbles, buckles, sprints on-

"Bloody _hell_," Slattery murmurs beside him, and all the way to the man's door they pursue him, firing as they run, the blood in a mist, the sweat a fog, all of the men underarm nerves, dripping palms-

A dozen shots chip away curb, door, jacket, and with four of them in him Smythe at last folds forward, puts his knees to the tarmac, bends with a terrific gurgle at the waist to land face first on his own step.

They exchange .38 for .45 and with these upgraded revolvers they leave Detective Constable Daniel Hoey in a puddle outside a garage on Hawkins.

He comes home to Rebekah with a smile on his face.

Now this is more like it.

* * *

Though four of them comprise the backbone of this murderous team, Collins is not done adding to their numbers, and in September an official 'Squad' is proposed, the members to report directly to Mick, to never flinch, to keep lips sealed and orders secret.

Bekah complains that he is away for too long, he reeks of gunpowder, he stays too late at the pub, he never has the _time _anymore, but the _adrenaline _of this century, sister-

He stalks men freely in the streets, no Mikael to swoop down upon him, no judgment delivered, no friend left aghast, and if he revels afterward in cigar clouds and beer hazes, of what harm is there in this, to ruffle Tom's hair, spill Liam's drink, to pit Mick's strength of arm against his own-

In the streets with revolver in pocket he is immersed in the thunder of men's hearts, predator boots, prey breaths, the crowds going on innocently about them while up Grafton they hunt Barton and down Harcourt they tail Redmond, and what a perfume is fear, what a bouquet is the last of man's mortal sighs, his rich red life in a spreading lake underneath him.

* * *

Collins keeps himself always one step ahead; through skylights he escapes, on trams he loses himself, and in this way he makes his way into 1920, amused by their warrants, impervious to their raids, his good humor in an armor all about him.

But so too are the great chipped away; what separates them only from the commonplace are the tucking away of this strain, the flawless timing of a brisk riposte, a coarse joke, the careful smoothing over of all the ruptures.

But around the man's smile he sees the cracks.

Mate, he thinks but he does not say.

If you want to talk.

If you need an ear.

Bekah scolds him for his hypocrisy, for reprimanding her attachments when he cannot rein in his own, but isn't he bloody _entitled_, sister, to enjoy these men who assure him with their trust and reinforce with their praise that father got it wrong, Mikael just never _understood_- the third Mikaelson is no coward, he flinches before no man, he pulls the trigger without hesitation, he is deserving of a friend and worthy of a brother-

By night he kills without compunction, by day he befriends without reluctance.

* * *

The war accelerates.

Collins has got wind of a counterinsurgency group known as the Cairo Gang, a desperate parry by the Castle to strike away at the heart of this network Mick pits so ingeniously against them, and Tom sets to work with his informers, unearthing everything there is to discover about these men.

The Squad has no little amount of busywork to keep them flitting about the city.

With Tom on their heels they are pointed toward the next and off they go, into the vast honeycomb of street and shop they disperse, another peeler dropped, one more bobby disposed of, good riddance, lads, can't clean them up quick enough.

It is on a Tuesday he and Slattery are nearly pinched.

Joe puts his muzzle to the man's back, gives him two to the spine, and when this does not quite shut the peeler's bloody mouth, he steps round to his front and he fires another into his head.

They lunge round the corner without a hitch, pocketing their revolvers, straightening their jackets, Joe's hat just a little askew, his collar dusted in a fine red powder, and off they go with arms swinging and heads lowered.

And then the shout.

"Murder!"

Slattery picks up his pace.

He lengthens his stride.

"There's a man been shot! Up the street- those men! Stop those men!"

Their exhalations accelerate simultaneously as the streets come alive around them suddenly, doors opening, eyes peeking, men turning about, women glancing up, and now another shout sews these men shut, an impenetrable wall, an insurmountable barrier.

"Murder! _Murder_!"

Beside him Joe stops abruptly, his little heart going, his breath thin, his color high.

"All right, then, you two, what's he on about?" a man in full RIC uniform demands, his little white hand nipping out to take Joe by the elbow.

Joe reaches into his pocket.

He steps forward with a smile.

He breaks the man's arm in three places, flings him one-handed back into the crowd, and as this swarm breaks apart with startled screams and frightened tears, Joe unearths his revolver, pokes its muzzle menacingly forward into the crowd. "Back! Clear the way, or I'll shoot the lot of you!" he screams.

They break through the mob, but there is one whose nerve is not so cowed, who reaches out with his thick red fingers to snag Joe's collar, who misses by an inch but comes up holding his own.

"You'll get the scaffold for this."

Oh, nothing so dramatic as that, mate.

England would not _dare_.

He snaps two of these thick red fingers, punches the man's jaw until it cracks, and then he takes this man by the throat and he slams him down against the pavement with a great wood splintering of the spine, and he kicks him until he vomits.

It's all a bit showy, of course, but though Mikael has forced into hiding his true strength, his real nature, he enjoys still this alpha posturing, this showing of the teeth and flattening of the ears.

He tips his hat and he flashes his dimples and he sprints off with a wink.

* * *

England pushes back.

Extended curfew, increased raids, further hold-ups.

But Collins has hooked his teeth into the meat of this Cairo gang, and like a dog he worries away, he does not let up, he chews through to the marrow.

* * *

We've got them, boys, Collins informs his apostles with tired smile and bright eyes.

November is a time of dying leaves, bleached skies, autumn in a cinnamon raining on this great green land, the rain a torrent more often than a drizzle, the voice seen before it is heard, the hands sheathed, the heads covered.

The 21st of this particular November dawns gray but not particularly damp, he sees through his window as he buttons his vest and he adjusts his cap.

Bekah's violets lie in a thin purple carpet across the front garden, the morning frost in a cake glaze round their tips, autumn mortality with its finger upon this last little pulse of existence among the skeleton trees.

There is hardly a stirring at this hour, curfew having just broke half an hour ago, the schoolchildren not yet off to their institutes, the mothers not quite ready for the shops. Only the mist makes its away along the sidewalks in little white ringlets of smoke, curling here, coiling there- quite a picture it makes, this murky wonder of nature, he thinks with an eye to his sketchbook.

She whirls into the studio as he adjusts his jacket.

Off to a football game today, Rebekah tells him with unusual good spirit.

Out to the pub with the boys, he responds with a smile.

She kisses his cheek with a loud smack of her lips and with cocked eyebrow he wonders what he has done to deserve such affection, and with a haughty toss of her hand and another twirl of her skirt she flashes out onto the stairs, humming as she goes.

Be careful, Nik, she cautions him.

Love you always, she calls over her shoulder, and he adjusts his jacket once more and he looks with a smile into the mirror above his little drawing table, and though he can't imagine what's got into the silly little thing, her words still penetrate all the way into his chest, right down to his heart they reach, burning as they go.

* * *

Joe Leonard and Seán Doyle collect him at a quarter to six.

* * *

At fifteen after, he veers off to join a little group gathering at the corner of Talbot, their faces unmasked, their breaths in little white cigar huffs before them, Paddy Moran at the head of them all, issuing orders.

We'll split off into two teams, he informs the men who watch him with anxious eyes and nervously twitching fingers. The first will remain downstairs with me, to keep the staff and the guests under control.

The second will proceed upstairs.

Nick, Seán, Dick, Séamus, Connor- steady hands, boys.

Straight shooting.

He smiles and fingers his revolver.

Fantastic, mate.

You won't be disappointed.

* * *

The festivities commence at nine.

In a surge they force their way into the Gresham Hotel, and with a shout Paddy orders the guests and the porters up against the wall with their hands raised, his revolver gesturing, his voice hoarse.

Poor little lad.

Tricky thing, nerves, but what a grand job so far, mate, keep up the good work.

They set about disconnecting the telephone, Dick bashing about indiscriminately with his sledgehammer, the guests sobbing quietly in the background, the men perspiring freely, he watching gleefully.

Paddy takes up the register, scans its pages for the names they require, sends the five of them with a nod up the stairs in the company of a hall porter.

The man escorts them to room 14 first, temporary lodgings of one L.E. Wilde, thirty-nine, just in the prime of his youth, really, little thing like him, and to their knock he answers informally, hair tousled, pyjamas creased with restless sleep or illicit love, and in a thundering they take him down.

He collapses instantly.

At Number 22 there is no answer.

He kicks in the door.

Connor shoulders his way past, gun out before him, Dick on his heels, the rest fanning out behind these two eager young lads, and with a startled cry Captain Patrick McCormack emerges from the toilet with razor in hand, shaving cream in a thick dessert layer over his jaw.

Connor sends his first round into the soft sponge of the man's gut, Séamus clips his shoulder, Connor gives him a third to the knee, Seán a fourth to the ribs, he aims the final into the man's skull, but it is Dick who will not be satisfied, who drops down beside the man as he breathes his last and lands him a blow with the hammer.

How ugly is man when he angers.

Though McCormack will not survive another minute Dick flails away as enthusiastically as though he is hale, shattering wrist, neck, collarbone, working his weapon up and down this man's frail candy body until Séamus wrenches him away with a horrified, "Are you mad?" and pins him back against the wall.

McCormack's face is no longer man but monster, a patchwork thing, his lips gone, his forehead fractured, little white fingers of bone bristling up through the skin, one eye crushed to juice, the other dangling by the nerve, his teeth in little bright piano key rows round his chin.

They stand looking down at him for a moment.

Do you see the irony, mother, in your regret? Do you see how this humanity to which you wished to restore him is twice as brutal, half as justified, three times as revolting?

* * *

There are half a dozen operations round the city.

There is a bit of a row at 22 Lower Mount Street, a closing in of the auxiliaries while the men flee away over the wall, their task incomplete, a survivor still afoot, but though Frank Teeling is injured and hauled away to the gaol, the rebels suffer no other casualties on this bloodiest of Sundays.

Thirteen murdered, six wounded- no clean sweep but a triumph nonetheless, a bit of feather for Collins to tuck into his cap, a rather grand memory for him to fold away among millions.

He returns home that evening to find Bekah pale and blood-spattered at his drawing table.

"The British sent an armored lorry into the park, Nik."

She was with a _friend_, Nik.

She was with a bloody _friend_, the first she has made in _ages _and when they opened fire she was among the first to fall and did it ever bloody _occur _to him that there might be consequences for this little war of his, that though he is incapable of love she gives it away so eagerly and _always _is it snatched from her, Nik, always and bloody _forever _and couldn't you just have _warned _her you stupid _stupid _inconsiderate _ass_-

Bekah.

Bekah, shh.

Shh, shh, shh, sweetheart.

There we are, good girl, baby sister, he tells her quietly with his lips in her hair and her head on his shoulder.

* * *

December sees the imposition of martial law in four counties.

January brings about its extension to eight.

The possession of arms, ammunition or explosives by any unauthorized person is to be punishable by death, pending the conviction of a Military Court.

Uniform or equipment issued to His Majesty's Naval, Military, Air or Police Forces found in the possession of any unauthorized person is to be punishable by death, pending the conviction of a Military Court.

Any person found to be taking part in armed insurrection, to be harboring any person who has taken part in armed insurrection, or who procures, invites, aids or abets any person to take part therein, is to be punished by death pending the conviction of a Military Court.

The military sets about disassembling motors. Those still in functioning condition may not travel beyond a twenty-mile radius; the use of motor-cars, motorcycles and pedal bicycles is prohibited between the hours of 8am to 6pm.

There will be no assembling of the people in public, no meetings of six or more adult persons, no failure to report rebels or any movement of rebels.

"We've got them by the throat," Collins declares. "Wouldn't give us so much of their attention if they weren't worried, boys, now would they?"

But the boy's shoulders sag so deeply beneath his weight.

Nicholas, he says one night in one of his half a dozen temporary offices, tapping his pen upon the desk.

We'll pull through.

They must bow eventually, they cannot hold out forever, not with so many of their officers killed, not with so much of their network penetrated- we're going to bloody _win _this and we are _close_, hold onto your convictions, boy, do not let them wear you _down_-

But in Collins' voice there is a question and across his young, young face coil the lines of the old, and in his eyes are so many pleas.

What if he cannot come through; what if the men's lives, the women's bravery have all been tossed into this abyss that is war for nothing; how does he make _sure _this country with its head bowed against seven centuries and its knees bent to foreign kingdoms will one day take its own steps and live its own lives and raise its own children- Nicholas, tell him how to not _fail_, _please_-

* * *

He bombs the lorries with renewed vigor.

What a toil it becomes after awhile, the same sputtering of orange cinders along the road, the winging about of the limbs, the screams of the wounded, the hissing of smoke, but in these new men he sees a certain desperation, an obvious fear, and though Collins has his wavering moments, his nights spent tossing and his days spent cursing, the conviction with which he pushes forward his men has served the boy faithfully all along.

The British have begun to fold.

At night he lies awake with a strange elation in the chest of a man who has only to blink to move beyond all this, to murder enemy, bury friend, to watch the future generations of these men subside in slow wax deaths beneath fresh grave dirt.

* * *

In July, England calls a truce.

Tom throws his hat into the air and bursts into tears, shaking his hand with the strength of the supernatural behind his fingers.

Collins screams, "Harry!" and lifts Boland a good three inches off his feet, burying his face in the man's collar.

The dispatch rider who has brought the news cannot stop smiling.

Tom throws his hat again, snatches Collins round the waist, pounds Harry on the back, picks up the little dispatch rider and sets off at a lively waltz with the poor boy's feet in a jumble beneath him.

Mick grabs hold of his face and for a moment he can only stand there smiling so brilliantly, his eyes wet, his hands shaking.

* * *

A truce is only a brief respite, the eye of the storm, an impermanent calm.

When the soldiers have finished it is time for the politicians to wrangle.

Britain's leaders want it on paper.

Ireland's wish for it to be settled.

London is designated as the point at which these two opposing forces will at last face one another as man and not enemy, and when De Valera sends Collins on ahead to negotiate in his place, the boy makes his displeasure known in language fit for the navy.

He and Tom listen for a very long time, exchanging little sideways glances.

"I'm a bloody _soldier_, not a politician," he snaps. "That bloody _fuckin' _little caffler- he knows they'll not give us everything we want- he's after me to take the blame so his bloody nose is clean of the whole damned affair."

But off he goes, Harry in tow, and throughout the entire affair he and Tom are kept abreast of developments by Collins' unwavering pen, Bekah reading disinterestedly over their shoulders, Tom watching her still with his resolute lover's gaze.

* * *

On December 6th, it is done, a treaty penned, Collins' signature put to the page, the rumblings of the malcontent already in a storm across the island.

They are all traitors, cry those most staunch supporters of the war.

What more would you have them do, volley they who are not unsympathetic to legislative intricacy.

This is merely a stepping stone, Mick assures. They have given us our own government, we swear allegiance still to the crown, but one step at a _time_, please, we bow no more, we have lifted our head from the stone, our legs stand straight, our children will know freedom-

But never is man so easily satisfied when he has bled so hard and given up so much, and when the political dust at last settles the country lies divided, Harry to one side, Mick to the other.

* * *

Civil war is man's most bitter conflict.

To turn your rifle on a neighbor, to fire upon your brother, to take up arms against former comrade, childhood friend- never does man's throat stop up so quickly nor his eyes fill so suddenly, never has he been torn to so many shreds, his convictions tattered, his love frayed- into so many _pieces _he is divided-

Not Harry. Not bloody _Harry_, who has seen him through so much, who has stood beside him for so long-

Do you know, Nicholas, Kitty told him once that in a letter to her Harry professed his undying love for this man who might as well be his brother, that forever would they remain friends, Mick and Harry, no chasm to separate them, no conflict to split them- what the bloody hell happened to _that_, Nicholas, answer him _this_-

"You've still got me, you big bloody bastard," Tom tells him with a smile and a twirl of his hat, and with a blink of his eyes and a squaring of his jaw, Mick picks himself up, and he soldiers on.

He is General Collins of the pro-Treaty forces, and all who stand in opposition are enemies of the new Irish state and shall be dealt with accordingly.

No brother will be extended a reprieve, no former ally a pardon.

When anti-Treaty forces take up residence at the Four Courts and refuse to vacate on threat of shelling, Collins waves forward the artillery, and he watches the guns pound to dust men who braved death at his command and friends who slept so soundly alongside him.

Just the way of it, Nicholas, he says quietly, but he turns his back before they are finished, and he stands swallowing very rapidly and blinking very quickly.

* * *

Civilians are never so lucky as to escape unscathed this event of the soldier, and so to the innocent this war is taken, Catholic schoolchildren bombed, Protestant businesses burned, entire families shot, homes fled, streets overrun.

Bekah is frightened, Tom pale-faced, Collins stalwart, Liam stoic.

He goes nowhere without his rifle.

The ambushes are numerous, the roads blocked every which way, flames smoldering on, gunfire in a constant chatter all around him.

He is reminded of the trenches, those blood and mud-filled channels of nightmare with their veils of mustard gas, the disembodied limbs of the German generals and the English sergeants floating in a fecal soup.

In a thousand years he has made many memories, most of which are to be discarded, but there are some images a man can never shake, and for another millennium will he carry on those trenches, and for another still will he recall the pyrotechnics of these Irish guns.

* * *

War is a montage: nights sewn together and days blurred from one to the next, your eyes sand-scoured, your throat dry, your hand merely an extra appendage of this rifle you barely put down, the rain an annoyance, the sun merely there.

He feeds in between shootings.

He keeps Tom's head down and Collins' chin lifted.

In the vegetation of a little rifle pit scooped out hastily beside Trinity College, he shares a bit of soda bread with Tom and balances his rifle easily across his knees, looking up toward the sky.

Tom shoots one of the Republicans who sets up post on the other side of the road and then he leans across the pit, and he vomits into the grass.

"That was my first, Nik," he says shakily, wiping his mouth. "Mick had me in the offices most of the time, you know?"

He wipes the boy's face with a bit of grass from the pit, and he pats the boy firmly on the shoulder, and back into his hand he presses his rifle, about his throat he straightens his collar, his fingers gentle, his smile reassuring.

You'll be all right, mate.

Haven't you a friend at your side, to see you through this night, to help you into the day?

* * *

Boland is shot in August.

Tom brings round the news with his hat in his hand.

Collins presses his cheek to his desk and his hands through his hair and he lets go like a boy, sobbing so loudly he rattles the drawers.

"Do you know, Tom- have you heard what they said? About Harry's last words?" Mick asks roughly, lifting his cheek from the desk to lean his forehead into his palm. "'Have they got Mick Collins yet?' That's what he wanted to know before he took his last, Tom."

* * *

For weeks, Collins is a ghost, carrying on only because he must, moving forward because he has no other choice.

There are whispers of brandy stowed away in his drawers, disheartened queries to his staff -how would you like a new boss- chairs smashed in a rage, desks overturned with a roar-

And then round the end of August, he schedules a tour through his home county of Cork, and there is a visible brightening, a squaring of the shoulders, a smile flashed more often, a joke offered more frequently.

There are concerns of ambushes, but the Republicans wouldn't dare, he laughs off with his great booming chuckle, not in his own home, not where his mother birthed him and his father raised him.

Tom, Nicholas, you hold down the home front, boys, you hear, he orders them with a jovial handshake.

"He's perked right up, hasn't he?" Tom asks hopefully, sorting documents in one of the offices.

"He'll get sloppy," he replies moodily, propping his pencil against his bottom lip.

* * *

He maps Collins' route carefully.

There are several points along this journey at which the motorcade may be held up, but none so promising as Béal na mBláth, and he studies it with a frown, forgoing Liam's offer of a light as he sits flicking his dead cigar from cheek corner to corner.

"Don't worry about Mick," Tom reassures him. "He's got a whole bloody convoy and a machine gunner. He'll come through- Mick always does."

"Yeah," he says shortly.

But a thousand years has given him a nose for this sort of thing, mate.

He cannot accept so blindly your cheerful faith in a man whose head is wanted by that most bitter of enemies, the former comrade.

* * *

In all moments such as these, there is a suspension of time.

He sees the bullets not as they truly fly, but encapsulated in minutes, a strange flurry of casual snowfall.

Collins' convoy lets fly with a tattoo of machine gun fire; the ambushers respond with a firecracker fusillade.

The grass is chewed, the roadway torn apart.

Mick makes his way in eternal steps round the side of the tender, rifle in hand, mouth open, head bare.

The shells fall hissing to the gravel; the shouts clear the roadway in great echoing leaps.

Mick drops to prone as little shadows scurry about behind the tender with their own weapons in hand.

The gunner curses from within his tower, slams his hand against the mis-fed belt blocking the muzzle, skips a hot white misfire over the roadway in front of him.

The ambushers dash in an ant rushing from cover to cover.

"Mick, get back in the bloody car!" he hears someone scream. "For fuck's _sake_, man-"

He cracks his neck.

He smiles.

He descends on the ambushers in a blur, his fangs out, his hands always in motion, their screams magnificent, their blood hot.

There is a sudden redirection of the ambusher's bullets, but what a shame, mates, your technology has no effect, your weapons give him not a flinch, through the whole bloody lot of you he walks with his jacket shot to pieces and his wrist hanging by a sliver, and watch how he _smiles _with your warm fatal metal beneath his skin-

The last of them breaks from cover to make his way shrieking down into the road.

He intercepts the man mid-way, tears out his spinal column with one savage jerk of his hand, buries his face in his ruptured back and tongues his way down into this terrific red elixir of man which is so enhanced by his fear.

He lifts his head, wipes his mouth, takes a burst to the chest.

"_Stop_," he snaps with his red, red lips.

The gunner swings his muzzle round again, lets loose another barrage.

"I said _stop_," he roars, and in a bound he reaches the tender and he peels it open with taffy ease, and out he drags the screaming gunner, the man's pants damp, his hands flailing, his feet kicking.

He severs his neck with one scissor gnashing of his teeth and tosses him aside.

He makes short work of Collins' other companions.

He smears the blood from his face as he makes his way toward Mick, holding both hands out carefully, his steps light, his voice mild. "Easy, mate. I won't hurt you. You'll forget all of this in a moment, Mick, so why don't you just-"

There is a sudden explosion.

He freezes.

Mick cycles another round into the chamber of his rifle.

He flicks his eyes very carefully down to his vest and the smoking little crater Collins has blown through its fibers.

He cocks his head.

"Now I know you didn't mean that, Mick."

He fires again.

He propels himself backward with the heels of his boots, wriggling on his ass through the dirt and the smoke and the blood, breathing in asthmatic wheezes, shooting with jerky imprecision, his sweat palpable, his heartbeat deafening.

"Mick, would you bloody _stop_-"

"Get the fuck back!"

He walks on, his hands still out, his voice soothing. "If you'd hold still, this would be over in a moment-"

"_Take another step, you fuckin' demon_!" he screams, scrambling to his feet with the rifle in his white, white hands. "_Take another bloody step_, _go on_!"

He stops. "I just _saved _you, mate-"

"What are you? What the _bloody hell _are you, Nicholas?"

"I'm your friend."

"You're a bloody _demon_- Jesus, Nicholas, my _friend_- no, you're a bloody _monster_- this whole time- _what the bloody fuck are you_?" Collins demands again.

The dust settles between them.

The shells cool beneath them.

"I'm a who, not a what," he says, with such _courtesy _in his voice, mate.

Now how about you show him a little respect in return, hmm?

Collins shoots him again.

"No- no no _no_- you're a bloody _thing_, Nicholas- Christ, _Christ_-"

So his mother deemed him, mate, and his father before her.

He turns away with his hand to his mouth.

His father-

His father called him so many things, you know, but not once did he ever name him son, not even before the revelation of his mother's little indiscretion: a son is _human_, he is capable of great feats and he is entitled to certain rights, but Niklaus, no- Niklaus is simply an _object_, a vessel into which all frustrations may be poured, a whipping post, a bloody _dung heap_- kick him, deride him, do what you _will_, call him what you may, it is only _Niklaus_-

But you were his friend.

You were his _friend_, mate, don't you understand what that _means_?

He tries to turn away.

But the boy just keeps _chipping _at him, he can cease neither his firing nor his insults, he will not bloody _stop_-

He flashes across the road.

He leaves a mere inch between the boy's nose and his own.

"I _fought your bloody war_; I _played your little games_. Have you no _appreciation _for that? How quickly you forget that I haven't touched a hair on your bloody head, on Tom's head, that I've in fact _saved _you and your men numerous times, that with my monstrous _demon _hands I have spared your life today-"

"No no no no no-" the boy insists, shaking his head, the sweat flying in a halo from his bangs, that boisterous heart pumping just an inch away. "Take a fuckin' step _back_, Nicholas-"

He backhands the boy so hard he is lifted off his feet and he sits down hard in the dust, the rifle clanging away down the road. "Get off me! Get _your bloody hands off me_!" Mick screams, trying to crawl away through the powdered rock, the ticking metal of the cooling shells, his fingers pawing away at the gravel, his boots slithering along behind him, his shoulders heaving.

Would you like to see a _demon_, mate- would you like to know of just what he is capable when those he trusts disappoint him-

Go on, Niklaus, says his father.

You are no better anyway, insists his mother.

Niklaus you have no soul-

Nik you cannot love-

Klaus you are not worthy-

But _isn't _he father, _can't _he sister- then why has this man's betrayal _cut _him- why does he turn away with a sharp breath and spin back with a scream, his Mauser somehow in his hand, his finger magically round the trigger- why does he _shoot _and shoot until the boy flops over with a sigh, why does he throw aside his gun, rip down into the flesh of this man who once deemed him friend- why does he tear and tear and _tear _and still find no _relief_-

He pulls back with a gasp and he sits down in the dust with the boy's blood on his tongue and vomit in his throat and for so long he goes on shaking beside the tender.

* * *

He makes his way home with Collins' blood still on his hands and in stains across his collar.

Bekah pokes her head into the studio where he sits before his canvas seeing nothing.

"Nik?" she asks carefully.

He looks up so slowly, with little incremental jerks of his head, and though something has come, and it has scooped him clean, it has hollowed chest, emptied gut, drained lungs, there is something in his eyes which brings her across the room and slips her arms round his neck and presses his face down deep into her neck.

"I want to leave, Bekah," he says, and this voice which emerges is not his own, pressed flat, wadded small. "I want to go _home_."

* * *

**A/N: Your daily (monthly, whatever) reminder that though Klaus may draw ponies and possess the ability to dimple me out of my pants in 2.5 seconds flat, he is still, you know, off his fucking nut.**

**We'll see more of Marcel (and eventually that witch of his who came up way back in the first one-shot) in the next one-shot. And, of course, the lovely Rebekah is here and bitchier than ever, so that of course will present some difficulties- she and Klaus obviously have a long way to go to gain back some of the interactions we saw between them in the flashback sequences.**

**The quote Klaus references is from 'If on a winter's night a traveler' by Italo Calvino. I apologize for its length, but it's a challenge finding a short sentence in that book, and anyway, I really liked it. It's actually quite an interesting book on the relationship between a reader and his novel, so there's my shameless little 'Jennifer's Favorite Books' plug.**

**I'd like to address the historical accuracy of the flashback sections for a moment, so if anyone's not interested in a teeny historical lecture, you may turn away now.**

**Obviously this is historical fiction, and so some liberties have been taken, particularly considering the fact that this is not just historical fiction, but historical fiction featuring an immortal half-crazy vampire with an entire wagonload of mommy and daddy issues which he has towed along behind him for the last several centuries.**

**However, most of it is, in fact, taken from first-hand accounts of this incredibly bloody period of history. The personal interactions between Klaus and the others are all of course drawn from my own imagination, but even these are based off the fact that Collins was notorious for roughhousing with his 'boys'. The hurling game was inspired by pictures I found of Harry Boland and Michael Collins on a hurling field. The exact details of the raids are fictitious, but again based off real events. (For instance, Liam Tobin and Tom Cullen did actually escape a raid on Vaughan's by hanging from the windowsill by their fingertips.)**

**The descriptions of the prison breaks are all detailed just as they were by those who experienced them. (In terms of sequence of events, at least- obviously I have applied my own thoughts and character voice to the re-telling of them.) The formation of Collins' Squad is also lifted directly from my research, including the fact that their first victim, Patrick Smythe, indeed made it all the way from the street to his own house before he collapsed, which prompted the Squad to switch over to larger caliber weapons to ensure that their targets dropped right away. (Smythe was actually able to give a statement at the hospital the next day, and did not die for five weeks, when he finally succumbed to an abscess of the lung caused by one of the bullet wounds.)**

**The Gresham Hotel operation conducted on November 21st, 1920, now known as Bloody Sunday, is also recreated directly from first-hand accounts. The only details I have changed are some of the names of the raiders (for instance, Paddy Moran was in charge of this operation, but most of the others were not named in the book from which I gathered most of my information on the Squad's activities), and the fact that McCormack was not shot while shaving, but while sitting up in bed reading his newspaper. His body was, however, badly mutilated, presumably by the hammer one of the men carried during the operation. McCormack was also a case of mistaken identity, and should not have been murdered.**

**In response to the executions of prominent members of the Cairo Gang, British forces drove armored trucks into Croke Park later that day where a football game was taking place. They opened fire on the crowd, killing fourteen and wounding some 60 others. It has been claimed that they began shooting in self-defense after taking fire from IRA members concealed in the crowd, but this has never been proven.**

**Harry Boland did indeed take the anti-Treaty side during the Civil War. He was killed on August 2nd, 1922. His last words really were reportedly, "Have they got Mick Collins yet?" (Though lasting only eleven months, the Civil War of 1922-1923 is an incredibly bitter, devastating portion of Irish history, as all civil wars are, really. Collins faced off against many of his former allies and friends who were staunch Republicans and considered the signing of the treaty to be an act of treason.) **

**Michael Collins really was killed in an ambush at Béal na mBláth, on August 22nd, 1922. This is the biggest re-write of history I have done throughout the fic, since, obviously, he was not murdered by a crazy vampire who takes to rejection the way Julie Plec takes to logic. (Sorry- just one potshot, I swear. I'm still bitter over the magical werebaby.) Collins was the only one killed in the ambush, though a motorcycle scout traveling with his convoy was wounded. **

**Klaus shooting him with his Mauser is a nod to one of the rumors surrounding Collins' rather controversial death, which is that he was shot by one of his own men at close range with a Mauser. Collins' death is steeped in a bit of controversy, with three main theories bandied about, those being that he was killed by one of the ambushers, he was hit by a ricochet, or he was killed by one of his own men, either accidentally or for blood money. My research has led me to believe that it's a pretty safe assumption he was in fact shot by one of the ambushers, but the name of the man who fired the fatal shot will never be known, as no one actually witnessed Collins drop, and the best the ambushers can offer is that one of them fired and thinks he saw a tall man drop right after emptying his gun.**

**This one-shot has been a really interesting way to incorporate my research into my love for fanfiction (and Klaus of course), and I hope you all have enjoyed it. Thank you so much for your reviews, your favorites, your tumblr messages, and your beautiful graphics. Until next time.**


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